Strides Dev Med Educ. 2019 December; 16(1):e82679. Published online 2019 November 10. doi: 10.5812/sdme.82679. Research Article The Relationship of Happiness and Quality of Educational Services with Academic Burnout Among Students of Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, Iran Omolbanin Rahdar 1 , Azizollah Arbabisarjou 2, * and Somayeh Shahroudi 3 1 Educational Administration, Islamic Azad University of Zahedan, Zahedan, Iran 2 Department of Nursing and Midwifery, Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, Zahedan, Iran 3 Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, Zahedan, Iran * Corresponding author: Department of Nursing and Midwifery, Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, Zahedan, Iran. Email: arbabisarjou2007@gmail.com Received 2018 July 29; Revised 2019 March 02; Accepted 2019 March 16. Abstract Background: Paying attention to students’ academic burnout and identifying the factors affecting it is one of the concerns of higher education authorities. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of quality of educational services and happiness on students’ academic burnout. Methods: In this descriptive-analytical study, 477 students of Zahedan University of Medical Sciences participated in the academic year 2017 - 2018. The sampling method was stratified. Data were collected using the SERVQUAL Questionnaire, Isfahan-Fordyce Happi- ness Inventory (IFHI) and Breso Burnout Questionnaire. Then, they were analyzed by Pearson’s correlation coefficient, independent t-test, One-way ANOVA and Multiple linear regression using SPSS. P value less than 0.05 was considered significant. Results: According to Pearson correlation coefficient, there was a significant relationship between students’ happiness and aca- demic burnout (P < 0.001), but there was no significant relationship between the quality of educational services and academic burnout (P = 0.060). The level of academic burnout was higher in male students than in female students (P = 0.003). Multiple linear regression analysis showed that only the students’ happiness variable significantly predicted variations in academic burnout (P = 0.001). Conclusions: In order to reduce students’ academic burnout, effective factors such as happiness should be considered by the re- spective authorities and educational packages should be used to promote happiness and increase the quality of educational ser- vices. Keywords: Quality of Educational Services, Happiness, Academic Burnout, Students 1. Background Burnout has been attributed to a state of mental and emotional exhaustion resulting from an overwhelming role, pressure, time constraint and lack of resources to per- form tasks (1). In recent years, the variable of burnout has spread to educational contexts and it is referred to as aca- demic burnout. Academic burnout involves the three ar- eas of fatigue in doing tasks, academic disinterest and aca- demic inefficiency (2). According to Neuman, academic burnout is very important and helpful in understanding students’ poor performance and lack of enthusiasm for ed- ucation (3). Various factors such as studying and exams, essay writing, economic pressures, professional expecta- tions and doubts about the usefulness of studies and ca- reer prospects contribute to academic burnout, which can be reduced through students’ encouragement (4, 5). Higher education is one of the most important insti- tutions for education and human resources provision and the main pillar of the country’s comprehensive develop- ment. As a dynamic and purposeful system, it faces seri- ous challenges and its sustained development requires bal- anced and appropriate growth of its quantitative and qual- itative aspects (6, 7). A glance at the current developments in the higher education system suggests that higher edu- cation should maintain and improve the quality of services along with addressing the crisis of financial problems (8). Students’ evaluation of the quality of the provided services yields useful results for the decision makers of the educa- tional system (1). One of the methods used for measuring service qual- Copyright © 2019, Strides in Development of Medical Education. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the original work is properly cited.