The mediating role of attitudes towards the future and balanced life in the relationship between psychological flexibility and burnout of university senior students

Purpose: This study was conducted to examine the mediating role of attitudes towards the future and balanced life in the relationship between psychological flexibility and the burnout of university senior students. Method: This research was conducted with a correlational design from quantitative research. A hypothetical model was created to reveal the relationship between variables. The participants of the research are the senior university students of a medium-sized state university. 422 students were reached through convenient sampling. 408 data collected from 232 female and 176 male participants aged between 21-29 were included in the analysis. The data of the research were obtained with the Psychological Flexibility Scale (PFS), Maslach Burnout Inventory-Student Form (MBI-SF), Balanced Life Scale and Attitudes Towards the Future Scale. The analysis of the data obtained is followed by SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) 23.0 package program and the program plugin is Process Macro 4.2. (Model 4). Pearson Correlation Analysis was performed to determine the relationships between the research variables. Process Macro (Model 4) analysis was carried out to examine the mediating roles of the variables in the research model. Results: As a result of the analyses, there is negative significant relationship between psychological flexibility and burnout, negative significant relationship between anxious attitudes and psychological flexibility, and positive significant relationship between positive attitudes and psychological flexibility and positive significant relationship between planned attitudes and psychological flexibility and positive significant relationship between balanced life and psychological flexibility. Additionally, it was found that burnout has a positive and significant relationship with positive attitudes and planned attitudes, and burnout has a negative relationship with anxious attitudes. Separate mediation analyzes were conducted for three models created to examine the mediating role of future attitudes and balanced life in the relationship between psychological flexibility and burnout. Mediation roles were significant for all three models. According to the results of the mediation analysis for first model showed that, attitudes towards the future and balanced life had a partial mediating role in the relationship between psychological flexibility and emotional exhaustion levels of senior university students. In the second model finfings showed that attitudes towards the future and balanced life had a full mediating role in the relationship between psychological flexibility and depersonalization levels. According to the results of the mediation analysis conducted for the final model, it was seen that attitudes towards the future and balanced life had a partial mediating role in the relationship between psychological flexibility and low achievement. Conclusion and Suggestions: In the conducted research, all three models were significant. In senior university students, the indirect effect of psychological flexibility on emotional exhaustion through attitudes towards the future and balanced life is negatively significant. The indirect effect of psychological flexibility on depersonalization through attitudes towards the future and balanced life is negatively significant. The indirect effect of psychological flexibility on reduced accomplishment through attitudes towards the future and balanced life is negatively significant. It is thought that the research findings will contribute to understanding the nature of burnout, preventing it and interventions to cope with burnout. In future studies, students from different age groups or professional groups can be included in the sample selection, and the research can be enriched with qualitative methods. Practitioners can include interventions that focus on attitudes towards the future and balanced living, along with psychological flexibility, in preventing or coping with burnout.