Coping flexibility and locus of control as predictors of burnout among Chinese college students

The study compared the predictive value of locus of control and coping flexibility on student burnout. Two hundred and seventy-three Chinese university students completed the Chinese version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory - Student Survey (MBI-SS; Schaufeli, Martinez, Marques-Pinto, Salanova, & Bakker, 2002), the Coping Flexibility Inventory (CFI; Zhang, Gan, & Zhang, 2005), and Rotter’s Internal-External Scale (1966). Results indicated that the construct of coping flexibility was composed of perceived controllability and strategy-situation fit, which negatively predicted burnout. Coping flexibility accounted for significant incremental variance beyond locus of control in predicting the three dimensions of burnout. The results provided evidence for the advantage of a person-situation interactional construct in predicting behavior, compared to its personality counterpart.