Job Demands’ Impact On Mental Health Of Doctoral Students:The Moderating Effects Of Job Resources And Mediating Role Of Emotional Exhuastion

Doctoral students who are at the highest level in the higher education system,undertake the important task of scientific research and innovation,and receive attention from all parties,but their mental health is not optimistic due to the pressure from all sides.The factors affecting the mental health of doctoral students come from many aspects,such as institutions,supervisors,and peers.These factors can be divided into demands and resources.However,there is no research to examine the causes of doctoral students’ mental health from the aspects of demands and resources.Based on this,this study which draws on the concept of job demands and job resources in the field of organizational management and related research,selects the job demands and job resources applicable to the group of doctoral students as antecedent variables according to the job demands-resources model and resource preservation theory.At the same time,with emotional exhaustion as the mediating variable and mental health as the outcome variable,the relationship between the variables was explored,in order to clarify the influence mechanism of the doctor’s mental health.This study which took 253 doctoral students as the research object,used appropriate questionnaires for investigation,and obtained the following research results:(1)The job demands of doctoral students have a negative impact on their mental health,while job resources have a positive impact on the mental health of doctoral students;(2)Different dimensions of job demands have different correlations with doctoral students’ mental health.Among them,three types of work requirements,including study load,study demand,and paper publication demand,are negatively related to doctoral students’ mental health symptoms,while role ambiguity,interpersonal conflict,and overload demand were all significantly positively correlated with doctoral students’ mental health symptoms;(3)The correlations between the dimensions of job resources and the mental health of doctoral students are consistent;(4)Job demands are significantly positively correlated with emotional exhaustion of doctoral students,and there is a significant negative relationship between job resources and emotional exhaustion in Ph D students;(5)Emotional exhaustion plays a full mediating role between job demands and mental health;(6)Job resources can only play a moderating role in the relationship between job demands and mental health,but cannot regulate the first half of the mediating path of “job requirements-emotional exhaustion-mental health”.From a practical point of view,this study provides a reference value for improving the mental health level of doctoral students.Doctoral training units and organizations can start from the job demands faced by doctoral students and the job resources they have,through reasonable system settings,management mechanisms and training methods,ensure the job demands within reasonable limits,provide sufficient job resources,reduce the emotional exhaustion of doctoral students,so as to achieve the purpose of helping doctoral students maintain a good state of mental health.