Association between Workload and Psychological Well-Being of Faculty Members in the University of Kirkuk
Keywords:
Psychological well-being, Faculty workload, Higher education, University of Kirkuk, IraqAbstract
Background: Excessive workload is a critical concern for most professors worldwide and contributes to adverse psychological outcomes. The current trends of increased academic, research, and administrative activities at universities generate an urgent need to address this problem.
Aim: To assess the association between faculty members' academic workload and their psychological well-being.
Methods: A correlational study was conducted at the University of Kirkuk, Iraq, in 2025-2026. The final sample consisted of 402 faculty members recruited using a multistage sampling strategy. After providing informed consent, the participants completed a questionnaire that included items on socio demographic and academic characteristics, as well as their academic workload and psychological well-being. The results were analysed descriptively and inferentially using SPSS version 26.0 and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient.
Results: Over half of the faculty members (53.5%) reported a high level of academic workload, while over two-thirds of the participants (68.4%) demonstrated a moderate level of psychological distress. The analysis revealed a positive correlation between the academic workload and psychological distress (rₛ = 0.248, p < 0.001), suggesting that higher academic workload is associated with increased psychological distress and decreased psychological well-being.
Conclusion: The study demonstrated a significant association between faculty members' academic workload and their psychological well-being in the sample. Therefore, it can be concluded that increased academic workload among faculty members at the University of Kirkuk leads to psychological distress and adversely affects their psychological well-being. Thus, there is a need to reduce academic workload to maintain the psychological well-being of faculty members in Iraqi universities.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Badriyah Noori Mashaan* Publisher, Yousif Abdulmuhsin Salih
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