Ryan Beallis

Author: Ryan Beallis | Majors: Biology & Criminology | Semester: Fall 2022

My name is Ryan Beallis, and I am entering my final semester at the University of Arkansas. I am studying Criminology and Biology with a minor in Medical Humanities in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. I am conducting research under the guidance of Dr. Rocio Paez Ritter, a faculty member of the Department of Sociology and Criminology. After graduation I plan on attending medical school.

My research focuses on feelings of academic burnout and how those are related to other factors like academic performance and social support. The results of this study may help guide academic institutions in outreaching and providing resources to students most at risk of burnout along with providing the groundwork for future research on this area of study. For example, if a downward trending GPA is found to be associated with the development of symptoms of burnout, a counselor may be advised to send resources to the student informing them of mental health treatments, tutoring, or social events on campus.

I chose my topic while taking a class called Social Research with Dr. Paez Ritter. This class focused on how to conduct social research experiments and ended with students presenting a research proposal that we pieced together throughout the semester. Having experienced college before, during, and after the height of the pandemic, I saw a significant shift in the attitudes of my peers and myself towards our schoolwork.  After doing some very basic research into the topic, I learned that many of us had the classic symptoms of burnout: emotional exhaustion, reduced personal accomplishment, and depersonalization.  Students who previously cared very much about achieving high grades and putting full effort into their work now were aiming for passing grades and only putting enough effort in to barely achieve that. I became very interested in this topic due to its prevalence and impact on so many people around me, and Dr. Paez Ritter was happy to mentor me through the process.

This is survey-based research, and as of the writing of this blog, there have been 319 responses, but I have not analyzed the data yet. Through reviewing the existing literature, I learned that social support is strongly associated with lower levels of workplace burnout and symptoms of depression, and family support is more strongly associated with lower levels of depression than other forms of social support.  Because of these findings, I wanted to access the frequency and quality of social support experienced by respondents from their friends, family, faculty and staff, and other university programs. The raw data suggests that respondents of this survey described the quality of social support as best from family followed by friends, faculty and staff, and the university. I am sure there will be many more interesting findings after all the data has been collected and thoroughly analyzed.

The biggest challenge I faced was getting survey responses early on. A brief article ran in the Arkansas Newswire informing readers of the nature of the study and how to access it, and this yielded roughly 80 responses. This was followed by a lull in responses until Dr. Paez Ritter sent out an email to students in the Sociology and Criminology department.  Around this time, I put flyers around campus, and these two efforts brought the number of responses to the current mark of over 300. Throughout this whole process Dr. Paez Ritter has been extremely helpful and patient with me as I have learned to navigate the world of academic research.

The next step is analyzing the data and drawing conclusions from it. Additionally, there is a research conference in the spring semester in central Arkansas that we are looking at attending to present our findings.