Do job demands and resources generalize across academic career stages? Implications for burnout and work engagement

Objectives The Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) framework is widely used to explain burnout and work engagement, but its applicability across academic career stages remains unclear. This study examined whether the JD-R framework generalizes across junior and senior researchers. Methods This cross-sectional survey collected data from 3,101 researchers across 27 European countries, measuring burnout, work engagement, four job demands (illegitimate tasks, job insecurity, interpersonal conflict, work-family conflict), and four job resources (role clarity, job control, sense of community, predictability). Structural equation modelling (SEM) tested the JD-R framework. Results Burnout prevalence was higher among junior (29.5%) than senior (25.1%) researchers. Job demands were associated with burnout, while job resources were associated with work engagement and buffered against burnout. Multigroup SEM did not support measurement invariance across career stages, and separate SEMs showed only moderate-to-poor fit. Conclusion These findings suggest that the measurement of job demands and resources, as operationalized here, may not operate equivalently across career stages in this heterogeneous, multi-country sample. Career-stage-specific, longitudinal, and multilevel approaches are needed to establish measurement equivalence before testing the JD-R framework’s generalizability in academia.