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Academic procrastination - personal and family determinants

Marta Znajmiecka-Sikora, Agnieszka Łysio

Abstract

Procrastination is a phenomenon that emerged in psychology quite recently. The story of its "discovery" goes back almost 50 years, but the first valuable work began to appear in the early 90s. Steel in his meta-analysis indicates that procrastination - habitual and problematic postponing one's tasks - applies to 15-20% of the general population. As for the academic procrastination (postponing issues related to studying and learning) even 80-95% of American students confess to postponing their "duties". In the article the results of analysis of the phenomenon of procrastination are presented, showing its relationship to chosen personal features (general procrastination and self-handicapping) and family factors (retrospective assessment of parental attitudes of mother and father). Research has been conducted on 205 students of the University of Lodz and the Technical University of Lodz, using the Polish version of Steel?s Pure Procrastination Scale (PPS) adapted by Stępień and Cieciuch, as well as the PPS2 version modified to reflect the study situation, the Polish version of ASO scale (Anticipatory self-defense strategy) and Plopa's Questionnaire of Retrospective Assessment of Parents' Attitudes (version for a Mother and a Father). The scope of the phenomenon in the study group reached almost 20%, which is a much lower percentage than that already published by Steel. This may indicate that Polish students procrastinate less than their American peers. Collected results also revealed strong relationship between the academic procrastination and the general procrastination. Similarly, a significant relationship has appeared with regard to self-handicapping and to mother's acceptance/rejection factor.

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AUTHORS

Marta Znajmiecka-Sikora

University of Lodz

Agnieszka Łysio

University of Lodz

About the article

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15219/em66.1261

The article is in the printed version on pages 26-32.

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