Psychometric Properties of the Chinese Irrational Procrastination Scale: Factor Structure and Measurement Invariance Across Gender.

Amy Shaw,Jennifer J Zhang

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.768581

Abstract

The present paper reports on the preliminary validation of a Chinese version of Steel’s Irrational Procrastination Scale (IPS). To this end, the nine items of the IPS were translated into Chinese and data were collected from a sample of 2,361 mainland Chinese college students. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to examine the dimensional structure of the IPS, and multigroup CFA (MG CFA) was carried out to evaluate the measurement invariance across gender. Results revealed that the Chinese IPS had adequate internal consistency reliability, adhered to the one-factor structure, and exhibited strong or scalar invariance across the two gender subgroups, thereby providing support for the internal construct validity of the scale. Additionally, the IPS scores were found to be strongly and negatively related to the Conscientiousness personality trait while showing weak correlations with the other traits, which provided some support for the convergent and divergent validity of the Chinese IPS. Study limitations and future research directions (e.g., expanding the empirical evidence for the scale’s criterion-related validity) are discussed.

Highlights

Procrastination, the voluntary delay of action despite knowing to become worse off or disadvantageous due to the delay (Steel, 2007, 2010), is viewed as an irrational behavior pattern often associated with negative outcomes such as lower task performance, decreased well-being, increased physical and mental suffering, and unnecessary feelings such as worry, discomfort, guilt, and stress (Tice and Baumeister, 1997; Steel, 2007, 2010; Klingsieck, 2013; Steel and Ferrari, 2013)
The aim of the current study is to investigate the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Irrational Procrastination Scale (IPS) to provide support for its use in the Chinese settings which in turn would be helpful in facilitating procrastination research and prevention practices in China
To provide criterion-related validity evidence for the Chinese IPS adapted in the current study, we examined its relations to the Big-five personality traits (Costa and McCrae, 1992) which have been demonstrated to be relevant to procrastination in the literature

Summary

Introduction

Procrastination, the voluntary delay of action despite knowing to become worse off or disadvantageous due to the delay (Steel, 2007, 2010), is viewed as an irrational behavior pattern often associated with negative outcomes such as lower task performance, decreased well-being, increased physical and mental suffering, and unnecessary feelings such as worry, discomfort, guilt, and stress (Tice and Baumeister, 1997; Steel, 2007, 2010; Klingsieck, 2013; Steel and Ferrari, 2013). As a prevalent issue among both the general public and student populations, procrastination has been frequently examined in epidemiological research via self-report measures. Such studies estimated that at least 20% of the general adult population experiences difficulties related to procrastination (Harriott and Ferrari, 1996) and 50–95% of the student population engages in procrastinatory behaviors on a daily basis (Day et al, 2000; Ellis and Knaus, 2002; Schouwenburg et al, 2004; Steel, 2007). The internal consistency reliability and factor structure of the scale followed by its measurement invariance across gender as well as the relations to external variables are examined

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion