Testing the Moderating Effect of Burnout on the Relationship Between Anxiety and Sleep Quality

Several studies strongly indicate a connection between the quality of sleep and students' learning abilities and academic success. Thus, understanding the factors that disrupt one’s sleep quality is important. One potent factor that can disrupt sleep is mental health, particularly anxiety. Although anxiety is a natural process that tries to keep a person safe by alerting them to potential dangers, this has a downside by increasing psychological and physiological arousal that can disrupt how well one sleeps. Previous research has found strong correlations between sleep quality and anxiety; however, some people may be more vulnerable than others to the negative association of anxiety and sleep. Notably, those experiencing burnout may be psychologically depleted from their workplaces and have fewer resources to cope with anxious states. Therefore, this study will investigate how anxiety predicts sleep quality (Research Question 1), and how anxiety and burnout both relate to each other in their relationship to affect sleep quality (Research Question 2). Online surveys were completed by non-faculty employees (n = 140) from the University of California, Merced participants. These measures included the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 Scale, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and the Bergen Burnout Inventory. The results show a significant increase in poorer sleep quality as anxiety levels increased while the impact of burnout on this relationship was not significant enough. However, the results also indicated that a trend of sleep quality decreased as burnout increased, in the population with medium and high anxiety.