What are the factors that correlate with academic procrastination in an American high school setting?
Jiaxuan Ning
Class of 2019
Procrastination has become a common issue that causes interference with high schoolers' academic performance as well as their attitude toward schooling in general. Despite the prevalence of academic procrastination among students, there is a lack of understanding in regard to the causes to procrastination. Through a thorough analysis of the factors of procrastination, the situation in Bonne Lake High School could be improved.
It’s a common phenomenon among many high school students. From high achieving students to the ones barely getting by, the prevalence of academic procrastination are seen in all these students. The researchers would value the investigation on this topic for numerous reason. By analyzing the causes(external factors) of this issue, perhaps parents or teachers could come up with potential strategies to address it.
Through crafting unified questionnaires and surveys, students’ subjectivity will be largely reduced and correlations can be measured. Through the information given by students, I would analyze the definitive relationships among various external factors and how they choose to procrastinate on academic work.
Academic Procrastination: Procrastination, or the intentional delay of due tasks, is a widespread phenomenon in college settings.
External Factors: Various influences and factors that do not occur from within the individual but from elsewhere like the environment and others around you.
Academic Procrastination Among High School Students: Frequency and Reasons for Procrastination Behavior
The hypothesized results are factors such as parental criticism, and Aversiveness of Task will be significant positive predictors of procrastination as according to previous studies by Shih and Solomon.
A descriptive, cross-sectional questionnaire or survey was decided to be the best fit for the study. Specifically, I utilized PASS, Procrastination Assessment Scale - Students as the instrument of my study. It is created in Solomon's study to target college students. It is modified in this research since the targeted population are high school students. A copy of the survey is located in the appendix section of the paper.
The survey received a total of 65 responses. 3 of the 65 were incomplete in various areas and were removed from the results. First-year students had an average rating of 2.7; sophomores had an average score of 3.38; juniors had an average score of 3.9; seniors had an average score of 3.28. Initially, there seems to exist a steady increase in the level of procrastination as students advance through high school. However, the seniors had a considerable lower score comparing to the juniors’ average score, which makes the positive correlation between age and procrastination relatively weak. Variables such as Laziness, Aversiveness of Task, Rebellion Against Control, Parental Criticism all produced significant positive correlation coefficients of .515, .378, .366, .292 respectively when correlational matrix was conducted.
The findings of this research should help teachers, parents, and students themselves on addressing the procrastination behavior. After identifying the primary indicators, we could treat each factor separately. For instance, educators could adjust the basis of their teaching strategies to motivate the apathetic, lazy students. As identified in other literatures, adjusting teaching strategies appear to be the most efficient and cheap solution to students' procrastination behavior. One suggestion could include a control group of student which will receive a traditional lecture while a manipulative group of students will receive a more interesting, diverse lecture by making the contents more relatable. The level of procrastination is observed and recorded for each group prior and after the experiment to not only the effectiveness of reducing procrastination through changing classroom structure but also confirms the question of whether students’ lazy mindset is a predictor for procrastination.
Factors of Aversiveness of Task, Parental Criticism, Laziness, and Rebellion Against Control to be highly correlated with increasing procrastination. In contrary to the initial hypothesis, while Aversiveness of Task and Parental Criticism were directly correlation with procrastination, they are not the primary indicators of procrastination. While students frequently endorsed these two factors, students simultaneously mark other items as causes for procrastination. As characterized by their insignificant correlation coefficient of .378 and .292, they are seen as only minor factors. This finding is noteworthy because it’s evidence that in different age cohorts and academic settings, the primary indicator(s) of procrastination is different as well.
With the notion that primary indicators of procrastination differs in different age cohorts and academic settings, more correlational research should focus on studying students procrastination and its related factors in different ages.