‘Effective’ procrastination strategies? Self- regulation of academic procrastination among high achievers.

Presented as Joanna Sokolowska.

There is evidence to suggest that students who succeed academically such as those who pursue their education at the graduate level are just as likely to procrastinate as poor achievers, if not more. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to investigate why and how graduate students procrastinate and manage to “succeed” on tasks that they approach "at the last minute". U sing Q-methodology and structured interviews, participants were asked to discuss the relative contributions of dispositional (i.e., perfectionism, fear of failure), motivational (i.e., values, goal orientations, self-efficacy), and self-regulatory (e.g., effort regulation, time management) constructs in explaining their procrastinating tendencies. The results suggest that procrastination among high achieving students differs from their less successful counterparts. These students do not report procrastinating to compensate for a lack of self-efficacy. Rather, students report procrastinating because “they can afford it”, and know that despite procrastinating, they can still manage to achieve successful completion of academic tasks. The need for pressure was also cited as a common reason for academic procrastination. In short, it appears that more cognitive and metacognitive processes are contributing to graduate students’ academic procrastination.