Abstract
Procrastination became increasingly prevalent among students in recent years. However, little research was found that directly compares academic procrastination across different academic grade levels. The present study used a self-regulated learning perspective to compare procrastination types and associated motivation between undergraduate and graduate students. Sixty-six undergraduate and sixty-eight graduate students responded to a packet of questionnaires concerning their experience in an educational psychology class. The results show that students’ beliefs about the usefulness of procrastination were a better predictor of academic procrastination than self-efficacy beliefs and achievement goal orientations. Student age was related to procrastination types. Among the undergraduate procrastinators, the younger students were more likely to engage in active procrastination while the older students tended to engage in passive procrastination. Implications and future research directions are discussed.
Highlights
Despite considerable research describing negative consequences, procrastination has become increasingly prevalent among university students in recent years (Harriort & Ferrari, 1996; Knaus, 2000; Steel, 2007)
The present study addressed three research questions: (1) How procrastination types were associated with motivation for undergraduate and graduate students? (2) Which motivational factors predicted different types of procrastination for undergraduate and graduate students? (3) What were the differences in motivation among the different types of procrastinators between undergraduate and graduate students?
Pearson correlation procedures were used to address the first research question: How procrastination types were associated with motivation for undergraduate and graduate students?
Summary
Despite considerable research describing negative consequences, procrastination has become increasingly prevalent among university students in recent years (Harriort & Ferrari, 1996; Knaus, 2000; Steel, 2007). The self-regulated learning perspective was selected because it focuses on motivational, cognitive, and metacognitive processes of student learning (Pintrich, 2000; Wolters, 2003; Zimmerman & Schunk, 2001) Guided by this framework, the present study examined whether active and passive procrastinators possess distinctive characteristics in self-efficacy, metacognitive beliefs, and achievement goal, as well as test performance in undergraduate and graduate students. Based on the self-regulated learning perspective, self-efficacy, metacognitive beliefs, and achievement goals were examined in the present study, because these motivational variables were expected to be predictors of procrastination Because they are malleable student characteristics, future interventions can be designed to work on these variables (Banudra, 1997; Pintrich, 2000; Rakes & Dunn, 2010; Wolters, 2003). A composite score of these four subscales was used to assess the overall tendency toward active procrastination
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