Academic Procrastination Prevention/Intervention: Strategies and Recommendations.

Academic procrastination is widespread, and it is estimated to affect between 25% and 50% (Haycock, 1993) or up to 70% (Ferrari, Johnson, McKown, & Assoc., 1995) of undergraduates. Furthermore, procrastination, which is defined as delaying responsibilities, decisions, or tasks that need to be done (Haycock, McCarthy, & Skay, 1998, p. 317), also impacts students when they leave college. Approximately 20% of the adults surveyed in a study conducted by Harriott and Ferrari (1996) indicated that they were chronic procrastinators. This absence of self-regulated behavior (Tuckman, 1998, p. 141) compromises an individual's ability to set and achieve personal, academic, and career-related goals. Many contributing factors to procrastination have been identified in the research literature, including feelings of being overwhelmed, lack of motivation, perfectionism, and poor time management and organizational skills (Burka & Yuen, 1990; Milgram, Marshevsky, & Sadeh, 1995; Rothblum, Solomon, & Murakami, 1986; Solomon & Rothblum, 1984). Haycock et al. (1998) found that both low self-efficacy and high were significant predictors of increased procrastination for everyday, nonacademic activities. In addition, several cognitive variables have been found to correlate with procrastination, including irrational beliefs, external attribution styles, and beliefs regarding time (Haycock, 1993). The academic environment also presents several unique challenges that contribute to students' procrastination for scholastic tasks as one's reasons for engaging in learning, beliefs that outcomes are contingent on one's efforts and abilities, expectancies one has for success, and one's scores on test anxiety measures (Saddler & Buley, 1999, p. 686). Ferrari et al. (1995) describe additional cognitive distortions that contribute to academic procrastination, such as students' overestimation of time required for school tasks and their miscalculation of available time for studying. Structured goal setting, breaking assignments down, and changing cognitive styles such as perfectionism and fears of failure or success are common core strategies used to help students reduce their academic procrastination (Burka & Yuen, 1990). Using a multifaceted intervention approach is beneficial given that academic procrastination is not solely a deficit in study habits or time management, but involves a complex interaction of behav- ioral, cognitive, and affective components (Solomon & Rothblum, 1984, p. 503). Helping students to become more aware of their own cycles of procrastination (i.e., causal antecedents and secondary gains) is often a primary intervention used by learning assistance professionals and study skills instructors (Carter, Bishop, Kravits, & Bucher, 1999; Ellis, 2000). Without such insight and self-regulation, students may be at increased risk for stress and anxiety. At the university under investigation, over two-thirds (69.9%) of a randomly-selected group of 1000 students reported feelings of worry, anxiousness, or nervousness on a weekly basis, and over a third (38.2%) indicated feeling sad or depressed once per week or more (Boynton Health Service, 1999). Over one-tenth (12.3%) of the sampled students stated that they had been diagnosed with depression. Furthermore, many reported experiencing significant stressors in the last year, some of which were related to academic performance. For example, 9.3% had failed a class, and 5.4% had been placed on academic probation (Boynton Health Service, 1999). Such problems may reflect a continuation of patterns from students' experiences in secondary school. A large-scale study of 350,000 Ist-year college students who were surveyed during orientation and registration found that entering freshman in 1997 reported greater academic disengagement (i.e., being bored in class, over-sleeping and missing class, and spending fewer hours per week on homework and studying) than their predecessors from a decade ago (Astin, Parrott, Korn, & Sax, 1997; Sax, Astin, Korn, & Mahoney, 1997). …