Evaluating Social Problem Solving and Psychological Capital model on Academic Burnout through mediating Help Seeking from Peers and Academic Consciousness

The aim of this research was to assess the model of academic burnout based on social problem-solving skill, psychological capital, academic conscience, and seeking help from peers. This study is a descriptive-correlational research with an emphasis on possible causal relationships based on structural equation modeling. The population included senior high school students studying science in pre-University in the first district of Ardabil during 2016-2017 school year. Proportional stratified random sampling was used to select the participants. The sample size was determined to be 291 participants using Morgan Table 1970. The instruments included “Salmela-Aro and Naatanen’s Academic Burnout Questionnaire”, “D'Zurilla’s Social Problem-Solving Skills Inventory”, “Luthans’s Psychological Capital Questionnaire”, “Ilroy and Bunting’s Academic Conscience Questionnaire” and “Ryan and Pintrich’s Academic Help-Seeking Scale”. The results consistent with the hypotheses showed that social problem-solving skill and psychological capital had negative effect on academic burnout. In addition, the negative effect of seeking academic help as a mediator in the relationship between social problem-solving skills and academic burnout was confirmed. Academic conscience, as the mediator between psychological capital and academic burnout, was found to have an indirect and negative effect. And finally, the model with the experimental data from the study has a good fit