Abstract
Procrastination is a chronic and widespread problem; however, emerging work raises questions regarding the strength of the relationship between self-reported procrastination and behavioral measures of task engagement. This study assessed the internal reliability, concurrent validity, predictive validity, and psychometric properties of 10 self-report procrastination assessments using responses collected from 242 students. Participants’ scores on each self-report instrument were compared to each other using correlations and cluster analysis. Lasso estimation was used to test the self-report scores’ ability to predict two behavioral measures of delay (days to study completion; pacing style). The self-report instruments exhibited strong internal reliability and moderate levels of concurrent validity. Some self-report measures were predictive of days to study completion. No self-report measures were predictive of deadline action pacing, the pacing style most commonly associated with procrastination. Many of the self-report measures of procrastination exhibited poor fit. These results suggest that researchers should exercise caution in selecting self-report measures and that further study is necessary to determine the factors that drive misalignment between self-reports and behavioral measures of delay.
Highlights
Procrastination is a chronic and widespread problem, with some studies suggesting that one of every five adults engage in the behavior (Ferrari et al, 2007)
This paper summarizes literature documenting the alignment among self-report measures of procrastination and between self-report and behavioral measures of procrastination and pacing
We examined the psychometric properties of 10 self-report procrastination measures via confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)
Summary
Procrastination is a chronic and widespread problem, with some studies suggesting that one of every five adults engage in the behavior (Ferrari et al, 2007). Recent research (Hussey and Hughes, 2020) and policy (Sackett et al, 2018) underscored a need to assess the psychometric properties and predictive validity of commonly used self-report instruments. Such tests would control for possible sources of variability such as sample characteristics, administration method, or task type (for a summary see Kim and Seo, 2015). To our knowledge, such a test has not been conducted on self-report measures of procrastination
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