Browsing by Author "Ahvenainen, Jasmin"

Objectives. The purpose of this thesis is to get deeper knowledge about exhaustion experienced by high school students, their future plans and possible connections of these two. In addition, the relationship of these two with gender, year of study and parents' educational background will be examined. The topic of the study is explained by the continuous news around exhaustion, the worrying results of the school health surveys conducted by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, and the Finnish youth’s burnout- related research done by Katariina Salmela-Aro (e.g. 2008, 2009, 2018). Previous studies have shown that the well-being of young people is constantly deteriorating, and student selection reform made in 2020 has presumably made upper secondary school even more burdensome. Methods. In this thesis, I used ready-made material collected by the researchers of the Centre for Educational Assessment, consulted by the Statistics Finland, for the government-funded study "The reform of higher education student selection through the eyes of general upper secondary schools and students". In the research project, Finnish high school students were one of the target groups, and the material used in the thesis consisted of 4,620 students from 14 high schools. Data collection was carried out using an electronic questionnaire. I analysed the data using quantitative methods including sum variables, Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, Kruskal-Wallis test, multiway analysis of variance and cross-tabulation. Results and conclusions. The main results of the study were that there is a connection between exhaustion and future plans. The most exhausted students are more uncertain about their future plans compared to others and are more likely to have a gap year. Burnout increased as the studies progressed, and girls experienced more burnout than boys. Parents' high level of education was associated with higher educational aspirations and lower burnout. It can be concluded that the well-being of high school students is important for their educational path. This information should be used in high school students' guidance and managing well-being in the everyday life of high school and society.