The Relationship of Procrastination to the Academic Performance of the
Students in the City of Mati National High School
Review of Related Literature and Studies
This section contains readings and literature from different sources like journals,
books, websites, articles, thesis and dissertations related to the study. It starts with the
definition and determinants of the procrastination and it’s relationship to the academic
performance of the students. The independent variable in this study is the
procrastination which can be considered as a cause, while the dependent variable is
the respective academic performance of the students. The discussion goes further to
include other studies as well as there indicators.
Procrastination
According to Joseph Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul University in
Chicago and author of “Still Procrastinating: The No Regret Guide to Getting It Done,”
around 20% of U.S. adults are chronic procrastinators. Academic procrastination is
very common among university students: almost all occasionally procrastinate in one
or another domain of their studies, and approximately every second student regularly
procrastinates (Rothblum et al., 1986; Steel, 2007). Considerable attention has been
given to procrastination in university setting (Klassen et al., 2008). The student
population is especially prone to procrastination, with an estimated prevalence of 50–
95% (Steel, 2007). Procrastination may be defined as ‘the voluntary delay of an
intended and necessary and/or [personally] important activity, despite expecting
potential negative consequences that outweigh the positive consequences of the
delay’ (Klingsieck, 2013, 26). Typical for procrastination is that it is irrational and not
imposed by external matters and it is often accompanied by subjective discomfort and
negative consequences (Klingsieck, 2013). Procrastination is often associated with
several negative factors, such as lower academic performance (Steel et al., 2001),
increased stress (Sirois et al., 2003) and poorer mental health (Stead et al., 2010).
Therefore, it is necessary to understand the causes and the factors that maintain
procrastination in order to be able to reduce it. The challenge is that research in the
area of procrastination often lacks a coherent, theoretical explanation of the behaviour
(Glick et al., 2014) which has made it difficult to understand the phenomenon and to
follow the research (e.g., Klingsieck, 2013; Schraw et al., 2007; Steel, 2007).
Therefore, there are prevailing questions regarding the underlying and maintaining
mechanisms of procrastination which are yet to be learnt (Katz et al., 2014; Visser et
al., 2018). There is little evidence on cultural variations in the prevalence of
procrastination. One study (Ferrari, O’Callaghan, & Newbegin, 2005) found that the
reported prevalence of avoidant and arousal procrastination was higher in English
citizens than U.S. or Australian citizens. They concluded that chronic procrastination
was common among westernized, individualistic, Anglophone countries.
The core characteristic of procrastination Is the intention-action gap suggesting
that the procrastinators often have good intentions, but the challenge lies in the
implementation of these intentions (Dewitte and Lens, 2000). Thus, procrastination
has traditionally been understood as a self-regulation or time management problem
(Wolters et al., 2017). There is a strong body of evidence suggesting that lower levels
of self-regulating behaviours are related to higher levels of procrastination, and thus
self-regulation is one of the keys to understanding procrastination (Ferrari, 2001).
However, Visser et al. (2018) suggest that procrastination is complex behaviour that
involves both cognitive and emotional elements as well as evaluations of one’s own
competence. Recent research suggests that instead of being purely a self-regulation
or time management problem, procrastination is also strongly influenced by
psychological factors, such as the low confidence in one’s own abilities to perform
(Steel, 2007) and inability to cope with negative emotions that arise in challenging
situations referring to the centrality of psychological flexibility in understanding
procrastination (Dionne, 2016; Gagnon et al., 2016). In this article, we aim to bring
together these central constructs that have usually been addressed separately in
previous studies in order to understand the phenomenon of procrastination and its
underlying
mechanisms
better.
Researchers
have
traditionally
regarded
procrastination as a maladaptive or dysfunctional strategy used in an attempt to cope
with conflict or choices (Mann, 1982). Lay and Schouwenburg, 1993, Solomon and
Rothblum, 1984 argued that because definitions of procrastination refer to both
behavioral delay and psychological distress one should consider the magnitude of
procrastination in conjunction with the magnitude of its negative psychological
consequences; assumed to be emotional discomfort, including guilt, depression,
anxiety or stress. From this perspective procrastination is a wholly dysfunctional
behavior. The Procrastination Assessment Scale-Students (PASS; Solomon &
Rothblum, 1984), the most widely used scale for measuring procrastination in an
academic context, is a representative procrastination inventory based on the
assumption that procrastination is dysfunctional. It consists of items asking students
to report the frequency with which they procrastinate, the extent to which
procrastination causes them a problem and their desire to stop procrastination in six
specified academic domains; it also includes items designed to elicit reasons for
procrastination. Decisional Procrastination Scale (DP; Mann, 1982) is based on the
conflict theory of decision making (Janis & Mann, 1977), according to which
procrastination is a maladaptive coping behavior (Ferrari, Johnson, & McCown, 1995).
The Tuckman Procrastination Scale (TPS; Tuckman, 1991) assesses academic
procrastination resulting from inability to self-regulate or control task schedules (Ferrari
et al., 1995) is another inventory designed to measure procrastination as a
maladaptive behavior (Hensley, 2014).
Time Management
For students to better manage their curriculum and achieve learning objectives,
time management behaviors or skills are argued to improve the positive academic
output. The aim of the study is to find the impact of time management on the academic
performance of students among the diagnostic radiology technology students at KAU.
This study had a cross-sectional survey-based study design. It was conducted among
students of diagnostic radiology technology department at King Abdul-Aziz University
from Sep. 2020 to Feb. 2021. For this study, 152 students were targeted among which
142 completed the questionnaire, making the response rate of 93.4%. Among 142
participants, 75 (52.8%) were females and 52 (36.6%) were in the 2018 batch. Majority
of the students i.e., 107 (75.4%) had GPA between 4.5 – 5 in 2020. Whereas, 37.3%
agreed or strongly agreed that they manage their time. Here, 69.2% students with 4.5
– 5 GPA strongly agreed that they meet their deadline (p value = 0.005) and 36.7%
students with 4 – 4.5 GPA strongly believed that their academic performance
decreased due to mis planning (p value = 0.005). Around 71 (66.3%) students with 4.5
– 5 GPA agreed or strongly agreed to make to do list or calendar (p value 0.047). In
conclusion, according to student’s perception, preplanning their studies had been
beneficial for their academic performance. However, less than half of the students
agreed that they manage their time
There are students are expected to perform well with excellence in everything
that they do, most especially in the academic aspect. One factor that dictates the
quality of performance of a student is his/her punctuality that is, getting to school on
time or being tardy. As cited by Nakpodia and Dafiaghor (2011), “lateness” can be
defined as the “situation where an individual arrives after the proper, scheduled or
usual time (Oxford Advance Learners’ Dictionary, 5 th ed., 1995), Lauby (2009) puts it
as a term used to describe “people not showing up on time” and Breeze et al. (2010)
contributed by saying that, lateness is synonymous with “tardiness”, which implies
being slow to act or slow to respond, thus not meeting up with proper or usual timing.
Lastly, Weade (2004) defined tardiness as “being late for any measurable length of
time past the stated or scheduled start time for work or school.”
Gender
As conflicting results for the association between procrastination and some
demographic characteristics were consistently found, the potential factors to impact
these results have also sparked much interests in current study (Pychyl et al., 2002;
Özer et al., 2009; Steel and Ferrari, 2013). Svartdal and Steel (2017) have pioneered
the examination and revision for five mainstreaming scales, and indicated the
variability of psychometric quality for different measurements (Svartdal and Steel,
2017). In addition to this field, results based by heterogeneous measuring tools were
found in elsewhere (Dawis, 2000; Marsh et al., 2013). In this vein, it lead us to assume
that the conflicting results may be moderated by different scales. Further,
procrastination type is also noteworthy to be an alternative moderator. On the basis of
temporal motivation theory, the main factor to promote one postponing off is the
inadequate motivations (Steel, 2007). A robust body of studies provided solid evidence
to claim the interaction effect of gender and motivation, which demonstrated that
female posed high intrinsic motivation than male in academic activities (e.g., reading,
L2 learning, Rusillo and Arias, 2004; Kissau, 2006; Hakan and Münire, 2014). Despite
no straightforward evidence, such interaction may bring about the specific sexdifferences between academic procrastination and other ones. Lastly, the educational
stage stress should be taken into account to explain the heterogeneous results for
sex-differences in procrastination. It is well-known to us for the close association
between perceived stress and procrastination, with more stresses for stronger
procrastination tendency (Stead et al., 2010; Sirois and Tosti, 2012). On the other
hand, more stresses were perceived for students in high educational stages than
others, and make undergraduates more prone to procrastinate (Pascoe et al., 2020).
Given the significant gender-difference (Barnett et al., 1987), we are interested in
probing into how the educational stage may influences procrastination and even the
interaction of gender and procrastination. Males Procrastinate More Than Females
A total of 193 papers (k = 193) were includeincludeed to pool effects for revealing
gender differences in both general and academic procrastination, with 102,484
participants [47,901 males (46.73%), 54,583 females (53.27%)]. The findings derived
from both Q and I2 tests showed a high level of between-study heterogeneity [Q (192)
= 1,266.78, p < 0.001, I2 = 84.84] and thus indicated that the REM is more suitable
here. The REM results demonstrated that the procrastination tendency was
significantly higher in males than in females (r = 0.042, 95% CI: 0.023–0.056, z =
4.785, p < 0.001) (see Supplementary Table 1 and Figure 2). No publication bias was
found in this meta-analysis (Egger’s test t = 0.38, p = 0.70; Begg test tau = 0.02, p =
0.65; fail-safe N = 7,226) (see the funnel plot in Supplementary Figure 1). The results
of the modified Newcastle-Ottawa quality control assessment demonstrated good
quality for the included studies and showed high scorer reliability based on the
Spearman test (Qs = 4.48, r = 0.99, p < 0.001). In particular, this study provided robust
statistical evidence that males procrastinate more than females (n = 102,484, k = 193;
r = 0.042, 95%, p < 0.001) in both general and academic procrastination, which was
consistent with previous investigations suggesting a relationship between them
(Pychyl et al., 2000; Steel, 2007; Gröpel and Steel, 2008).
There might be promising evidence suggesting a causal role of demographic features
(i.e., gender) in procrastination. Males were found to possess a lower level of selfcontrol, which is a key determinant of procrastination (Tewksbury and Higgins, 2006;
Ward et al., 2018). As a result, males may tend to procrastinate more due to a lack of
goal-directed processing ability and an inability to suppress tempting stimuli (Pychyl
et al., 2000; Ferrari, 2001; Steel, 2007; Steel and Klingsieck, 2016).
Similarly, males also have a higher level of impulsivity than do females (Cross et al.,
2011). A large number of studies have demonstrated that procrastination is positively
associated with impulsivity from the behavior, neural variance and behavioral genetics
perspectives (Steel and König, 2006; Gustavson et al., 2014; Liu and Feng, 2017),
suggesting that males may procrastinate more than females as a result of intrinsic
neurobiological factors. Furthermore, a previous meta-analysis found that females
score higher on effortful control than males and that effortful control is closely related
to procrastination as well (Else-Quest et al., 2006; Lian et al., 2018). This may explain
why females procrastinate less than males. On the other hand, existing studies have
provided insights into the evolutionary origins of procrastination, suggesting that
procrastination can be considered a strategy frequently used throughout life to deal
with unpredictable circumstances (Steel, 2007; Chen and Chang, 2016; Chen and Qu,
2017). Compared to females, males were identified to be more sensitive to
unpredictable environments, in which they are able to adapt and quickly develop a
strategy to succeed using their past experience (Del Giudice, 2009; Jonason et al.,
2017). Thus, males’ procrastination tendencies may be stronger than those of females
as an evolutionary consequence. Notwithstanding that, the external ecological validity
should be mentioned to discuss above results. Notably, there were no any statistical
considerations aiming at the ecological validity of this meta-analysis though the
substantial heterogeneity for these included studies was found (Andrade, 2018).
Despite statistical significance, above explanations to support our findings that the
males procrastinate more than females were largely grounded post hoc evidence.
There were evidence not enough to validate whether this conclusion could be
generalizable elsewhere. Given that, extending this conclusion should be quite careful.
On balance, the results demonstrated that males procrastinate more than females, not
only because of their low levels of self-control and effortful control and high levels of
impulsivity but also because of human evolutionary influences. (Andrade, 2018).
Grade Level
The procrastination serves as major cumbersome of many students in secondary
schools in Nigeria, because they fond of postponing what they are expected culture
right time, for instance many students spend much time on social media instead of
read their books, even procrastination affect the reading culture among the students
in Nigeria. (Adeniyi Adewale, 2019).
Therefore, many students prefer to postpone the tasks and do pleasure things
which they can not benefit from it .For example, many students fail public examination
(WAEC, GCE, NECO) e.t.c yearly because they like to postpone the time to read their
books, but they lure to spend all their time on social media .This prevail among the
secondary schools students both Urban, Rural and River area in Nigeria. (Adeniyi
Adewale, 2019).
In all secondary schools in Nigeria there is problem of inability of the students to
perform well because many time they are engaged much in social media instead to
read their books. it makes the students to perform woefully on their studies, it also
contribute to the inability of reading culture. (Adeniyi Adewale, 2019)
Academic Performance
The attitudes of students are important to be understood toward in their school
and learning, learning can be affected by different factors (Candeias, Rebelo, and
Oliveira, 2008). Honour students are more likely to perform and participate in non
academic activities than non-honour students (Wolfensberger, 2004). The attitudes of
students toward school and learning is dependent on their school, school level, age,
and parents (Candeias, Rebelo, Oliveira, and Mendes, 2010). Students who are low
in their self-esteem but higher interdependent level with others are students who think
with positive attitudes toward psychological help (Yeh, 2002). The attitudes of students
are related to their academic scores for instance with directly affect their academic
performance (Janssen, 2014). Students who hold neutral and positive ones are less
verbal than the students who hold negative attitudes, because their attitudes can affect
the achievement in academic performances (Schau, 2005). It is good for the students
to develop their positive mental attitude while they are still in the early years of college
for them to be ready to broaden their responsibility and maturity and to be more
confident and independent (Laguador, 2013). The attitudes of the students towards
learning in mathematics can improve the student’s achievement (Khun-Inkeeree,
Omar-Fauzee, and Othman, 2016). The attitudes of the students have a strong impact
in their learning toward in academic performances (Cahill, McDaniel, Frey, Hynes,
Recipe, Zhao, and Trousil, 2018). Academic achievement is predicted by attitude in
learning (Veresova and Mala, 2016).
The cognitive variables of teachers are the most Important than any other,
because it can predict the academic performance of the students through their
questions it can help the students to think critically (Fehintola, 2014). Perseverance is
one the attitudes that considered a strength of courage that reflects to the academic
performances of a students (Littman-Ovadia and Lavy, 2015). Motivation, tenacity,
trustworthiness, and perseverance are some of the attitudes that can lead the students
to success (Heckman and Rubinstein, 2001).
Character has an effect in grades and in interpersonal characteristics (Kern and
Bowling III, ). Time management is one of the attitudes that is proven variable of
success (Renzulli, 2015). Even though effort is related to the attitude of students, it is
still fails to be an important in predicting the academic achievement of the students (Li,
2012). Avoidance to trouble is associated to high academic scores (Bowen, Hopson,
Rose, and Glennie, 2012). Those students who care likely to gain understanding are
the students who talk informally to the faculty members (Komarraju, Musulkin,
Bhattacharya, 2010). Motivated or less motivated students can still gain high grade
point average (Janssen and O’Brien, 2014). The students who are high achievers are
the students who have positive study attitude (Sarwar, Bashir, and Alam, 2010).
The academic success depends only in cognitive aspect as well as the
emotional abilities (Nasir and Masrur, 2010). Teachers who are passionate can
influence the performance of the students (Mart, 2013). The relationship of the
students toward in their peers, families, and teachers can affect their achievement on
their academic performances (Murray- Harvey, 2010). The instructor’s positive
reinforcement can affect their attitudes towards their study habits (Rhoads and
deHaan, 2013). The students who decide responsibly achieves more (Greenberg,
Weissberg, O’Brien, Zins, Fredericks, Resnik, and Elias, 2003). Students expect for
their future as manifested in their positively increased views (Twenge and Campbell,
2008). Health conscious students adapt using strategies which lessen stress
(Hamaideh, 2011). Environmental forces conflict with freedom and self-determination
(Lefcourt, 2014). The positive and negative feedback of the participants can affect the
evaluations of the students towards in their academic performances (Guenther and
Alicke, 2007). Students who are actively and positively thinking are less lonely
students which may directly correlation with students performances (Wang, Chen,
Chen, Li, Harari, Tignor, Zhou, Ben-Zeev, and Campbell, 2014).
Grades
Grading policies have a direct effect on the grades that students receive, it is
extremely important that schools carefully consider what practices best measures
students performance (Reeves, 2008). Grading practices have long be a controversial
issue among educators and academics. Through grades are accepts as a standard
and inherent part of education system, there is some disagreement as to what exactly
is the function of grades. There has been much debate over whether grades should
be designed to communicate a student’s performance in variety of areas, including
behaviour and participation or whether they should just represent a student’s
proficiency in a given subject. Some educators have even questioned the value of
using grades at all, claiming that using extrinsic rewards to reinforce learning teaches
students to care more about their performance on assessment than on what they learn
(Edwards, 1999).
The grading practices used by many teachers are designed to communicate
student’s performance in a number of areas, including both academic achievement
and behavioral factors such as student effort, conduct and attitude (Allen, 2005). When
teachers assign grades, especially final grades, they are communicating a number of
messages to students with single mark. According to Zoeckler (2007), teachers often
attempt to communicate message that include; level of expectations, level of academic
achievement, encouragement and disappointment. Educators often use grades as
both a punishment for bad behaviour and a motivational tool for good behaviour
(Wormeli, 2006).
However. Some educators now recommend that grades should not be based
on behaviour and other non-academic factor, but only on student’s mastery of the
material in a given subject. Grading students on what they know and can do, and not
on other factors, will help teachers provide students and parents with specific feedback
on what learning areas need improvement (Andy, 2011). Grading only on achievement
is a key elements of standards-based grading, a practice that is gaining in popularity
that focuses solely on student's proficiency on well-defined course objectives
(Scriffiny, 2008).
Relationship Between Procrastination and the Academic Performance of the
students
Results from qualitative studies exemplify the negative role of freedom in the
study situation in several ways, as too little regulations in studies (Grunschel et al.,
2013), low degree of external structure (Klingsieck et al., 2013), or insufficient direction
of lecturers (Patrzek et al., 2012). Overall, students reported feeling lost and
overwhelmed by the task of planning a whole course of studies, a semester, or even
an exam phase on their own. Thus, students lacking self-management skills such as
planning and prioritizing tasks (e.g., Lay and Schouwenburg, 1993) and metacognitive
learning strategies (e.g., Wolters, 2003; Howell and Watson, 2007) should feel
particularly lost when facing a situation with a large degree of freedom. The autonomy
associated with a large degree of freedom in the study situation makes the student
particularly vulnerable if skills are low (Low focus on study skills training) and if the
student fails to develop good habits and routines. Habits help people accomplish more
and procrastination.
There is a considerable body of empirical research on the relationship between
procrastination and performance, particularly academic performance. The results
have, however been inconsistent. Researchers have reported negative effects of
procrastination on learning and achievement, such as lower grades and course
withdrawals (e.g. Aremu et al., 2011, Balkis, 2013). The time pressure resulting from
procrastination can reduce accuracy and punctuality, and on this basis it can be
argued that procrastination will negatively influence researchers have suggested that
the lack of consistency in research on the relationship between procrastination and
performance is probably the result of using contaminated self-report data (e.g.
Rotenstein et al., 2009, Steel et al., 2001). Previous studies have relied on self-report
measures of procrastination, which are only weakly related to external indicators of
procrastination (Rotenstein et al., 2009). One study (Steel et al., 2001) reported that
the correlation between observed or externally assessed procrastination and selfreported procrastination was 0.35 while the correlation between observed
procrastination and course grade was −0.87; the correlation between self-reported
procrastination and course grade was only −0.36.(Kyung K. 2015). Various indices of
academic performance including self-reported GPA, examination grades, assignment
grades etc. have been used to examine the relationship between procrastination and
academic performance. Some researchers have reported that the relationship
between procrastination and academic performance depends on the choice of
performance indicator, for example Tice and Roy (1998) found that the correlation
between procrastination and academic performance varied from −.26 to approximately
−.66 depending on whether academic performance was indexed using various
examination or assignment grades. Jackson, Weiss, Lundquist, and Hooper (2003)
found that procrastination, measured using Tuckman’s scale, was negatively
correlated with cumulative grade point average (GPA) but was not associated with
American College Test score (ACT). We hypothesized that the choice of academic
performance indicator would affect the observed relationship between procrastination
and academic performance. Other studies have failed to detect an association
between procrastination and academic performance (e.g. Seo, 2011, Solomon and
Rothblum, 1984) or even reported that procrastination had a positive effect on
academic achievement (e.g. Brinthaupt and Shin, 2001, Schraw and Wadkins, 2007).
It has been suggested that students of greater ability procrastinate more than those
with lower ability (Ferrari, 1991). Ferrari concluded that procrastination tended to
increase during the course of a student’s academic career, as learning became more
self-regulated.