Effects of Rational Emotive Behaviour and Cognitive Behavioural Therapies in Managing Burnout Symptoms among Postgraduate Students in Public Universities in South West, Nigeria

Abstract

This study examined the effects of Rational Emotive Behaviour and Cognitive Behavioural Therapies in Managing Burnout Symptoms among Postgraduate Students in Public Universities in South-west, Nigeria. To ascertain the degree of treatment efficacy, a random sample of 90 postgraduate students in three federal universities were respectively picked from three selected states in South-west, Nigeria. Thirty participants were selected across faculties from the chosen universities in the selected states and they were exposed to Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Control group respectively. The pretest-posttest and control group quasi-experimental study design was employed with 3X2X3 factorial with the three treatment groups, gender at two levels (male and female) and socio-economic status at three levels (low, moderate and high socio-economic status as the moderating variables. The instrument used for data collection are Postgraduate Students Symptoms of Burnout Scale (PSSBS) and Socio-Economic Status Scale for Postgraduate Students (SESS-PS). The two instruments used for data collection were standardised scales with reliability coefficients of 0.78 and 0.73 respectively. A pair of pretest and posttest data was obtained from each participant who formed the basis of the findings using ANCOVA for data analysis. Three hypotheses were formulated and tested at α = 0.05 level of significance. Results showed that there were significant differences in all the three hypotheses tested. The post-hoc analyses were carried out for the three hypotheses tested. That is, there were significant main effect of treatment, gender and socio-economic status in reducing burnout symptoms among postgraduate students in public universities in South-west, Nigeria. It was therefore concluded that Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy can be used to reduce Burnout Symptoms among Postgraduate Students in Public Universities in South west Nigeria and recommendations are also offered.