Influence of Digital Competence on Perceived Stress, Burnout and Well-Being Among Students Studying Online During the COVID-19 Lockdown: A 4-Country Perspective

Vilmantė Kumpikaitė-Valiūnienė; Imran Aslan; Jurga Duobienė; Ewa Glińska; Victor Anandkumar

doi:10.2147/PRBM.S325092

Influence of Digital Competence on Perceived Stress, Burnout and Well-Being Among Students Studying Online During the COVID-19 Lockdown: A 4-Country Perspective

Psychol Res Behav Manag. 2021 Sep 23:14:1483-1498. doi: 10.2147/PRBM.S325092. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Vilmantė Kumpikaitė-Valiūnienė¹, Imran Aslan², Jurga Duobienė¹, Ewa Glińska³, Victor Anandkumar⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Economics and Business, Kaunas University of Technology, Kaunas, Lithuania.
² Faculty of Health Sciences, Bingöl University, Bingöl, Turkey.
³ Faculty of Engineering Management, Bialystok University of Technology, Bialystok, Poland.
⁴ School of Management, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, India.

Abstract

Purpose: This paper aims to reveal the influence of digital competence on perceived stress, burnout and well-being among students studying online during the COVID-19 lockdown in the spring of 2020 and to compare this influence on the basis of studies conducted in four countries.

Methods: An exploratory study was conducted in Poland, Lithuania, Turkey and India using a cross-sectional research design. A total of 1097 respondents took part in the survey. Well-being was measured by the World Health Organization (WHO) Well-being Index, stress was evaluated using a psychological stress measure (PSM-9) instrument, burnout was evaluated using the Copenhagen Burnout inventory, and digital competence was measured by the Digital Competency Profiler (DCP).

Results: The results revealed that social and informational dimensions of digital competencies had a positive influence on dealing with stress or burnout and improved well-being of students studying online during the COVID-19 lockdown. Moreover, the analysis on a country level highlighted that with regard to dealing with stress and burnout, the epistemological dimension of digital competence was the most important for Lithuanians and Indians, the informational dimension for Polish students and the social dimension for Turkish students.

Conclusion: The findings support the importance of digital competence on perceived stress, burnout and well-being among students studying online during the COVID-19 lockdown and propose deeper research directions on this phenomenon.

Keywords: COVID-19; burnout; digital competence; online learning; stress; well-being.