Determinants of Postgraduate Thesis Completion: Do Academic Stress and Burnout Play a Role?

Abstract

Postgraduate students often find work and thesis preparation demands compelling which in turn affect their thesis completion. The authors conducted a descriptive survey with a sample of 161 graduate thesis candidates (representing a 57% data collection return rate) using the census of the target population. Three scales were used to measure academic stress, academic burnout, and thesis completion, respectively; the questionnaires were administered via Google Forms. The data were analysed using Pearson’s correlation coefficient and multiple linear regression. We found that lack of or inadequate sponsorship from beneficent organisations, several administrative bureaucracies, and inaccessibility to research databases, among others, place academic stress on graduate candidates, which connects with burnout, affecting thesis completion. The study also found that academic stress and burnout are essential determinants and predictors of thesis completion. The authors thus recommend that postgraduate schools design and implement thesis preparation schemes that consider this study’s findings, especially those that recognise the elements of academic stress and its related burnout concerns for thesis candidates.