Academic stress and emotional exhaustion in university students in the context of virtual education

One of the main repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic in the educational field was the migration from face-to-face to virtual modality, which forced students to adapt to this new scenario. Currently, universities are beginning to gradually return to face-to-face or blended education, however, many of them still continue to provide the educational service virtually, which has favorable aspects, as well as some limitations. In this sense, the present investigation aimed to determine the relationship between academic stress and emotional exhaustion in students of the branch of a Peruvian private university in the context of virtual education. The approach was quantitative, the design was non-experimental and the type was descriptive - correlational with a transectional cut. The sample consisted of 273 students to whom the SISCO Inventory of Academic Stress and the Emotional Tiredness Scale were applied, instruments with adequate psychometric properties (validity based on content and reliability). The results indicate that 31.1% of the students had moderate levels of academic stress, 34.4% had moderate levels of emotional exhaustion and it was determined that Spearman's rho correlation coefficient between both variables was 0.731 with a p -value lower than the level of significance (p<0.01). It was concluded that there is a direct and significant relationship between academic stress and emotional exhaustion, which is why it is necessary for the university institution to design and execute preventive and corrective programs that allow students to reduce the prevalence of the problems addressed and improve their levels of psychological well-being, as well as their quality of life.