Predictors of Academic Procrastination in College Entrance Reexaminees: Depressed Mood, Academic Self-Efficacy, and Coping Strategies
Date Issued
2016
Date
2016
Author(s)
Tsai, Hsing-Tsu
Abstract
Academic procrastination not only is prevalent among college students, but also predicts poor academic performances and expulsion from college on academic grounds in extreme cases. The expelled students need to retake the college entrance exam once again to reenter college. However, compared with college students who have not retaken the college entrance exam, a higher portion of the re-examinees still suffer from procrastination after they have been readmitted to college. Past research found depressed mood and academic self-efficacy are possible predictors for procrastination. The first aim of this study was to test whether the status of re-examinee would be able to predict procrastination after controlling for depressed mood and academic efficacy and whether college students’ status would moderate the effect of mood and efficacy in predicting procrastination. The second aim was to test the predictability of various academic coping strategies for procrastination and to demonstrate how coping would moderate the effects of mood, efficacy, and status on procrastination. A total of 60 college entrance re-examinees and 116 college students without the experience participated in this study. Moderated hierarchical regression was applied to test (1) the predictability of depressed mood and academic self-efficacy to procrastination, after controlling for mood and efficacy whether the status of re-examinee would still be able to predict procrastination, and whether or not the patterns of predictability of mood and efficacy for procrastination among re-examinees would be different from those in the control group. (2) Next, after controlling for the above variables, this study tested the main effect of academic coping strategies on procrastination, followed by the moderating effect of coping on the relation among mood, efficacy, status, and academic procrastination. Results showed that depressed mood had a significantly positive and self-efficacy had a marginally negative effect in predicting procrastination. The status of re-examinee had a marginally significant predictability for procrastination, especially for those re-examinees with lower level of self-efficacy, who demonstrated higher frequency of procrastination. Regarding the analyses involving the eight different coping strategies measured in this study, most strategies that belong to engagement copings could negatively and those to disengagement copings could positively predict procrastination, with the only exception being social support coping. On the whole, the coping strategies applied by re-examinees were more likely to significantly forecast their level of procrastination compared to those applied by the college students in the control group. Differential patterns of prediction were revealed depending on particular coping strategies. The positive relations between disengagement copings and procrastination, and the negative relations between engagement copings and procrastination are easily detected especially for those with higher level of academic self-efficacy. That is, high academic self-efficacy seems to be a double-edged sword concerning the effect of coping on procrastination. The overall results of this study showed that both engagement and disengagement copings were able to moderate self-efficacy and depressed mood in predicting procrastination. Future research directions and the application of current findings in educational counseling were suggested.
Subjects
college entrance re-examinee
college expulsion
procrastination
academic self-efficacy
depressed mood
coping strategy
Type
thesis
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
ntu-105-R00227212-1.pdf
Size
23.54 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):7ba52439557719af7707defe2bbfa5c8