The ecological momentary assessment of procrastination in daily life: Psychometric properties of a five-item short scale

Whether individuals actually engage in procrastination depends on different factors (e.g., personality, temporal and situational prerequisites). In order to assess behavioral procrastination adequately, delays that qualify as procrastination must be differentiated from other forms of delay. We therefore developed the ecological momentary assessment of procrastination scale (e-MAPS). This five-item short scale was applied in an experience sampling study with 80 participants. Exploring the factorial structure of the e-MAPS revealed that the items cover two latent components, supporting the preconception that situational determinants and cognitive-affective appraisals are equally relevant to identify delays that qualify as procrastination. Preliminary evidence showed that delay patterns were assessed reliably. Associations between established self-report scales of procrastination and aggregate frequencies of behavioral procrastination, assessed by the e-MAPS, support convergent validity. We conclude that the e-MAPS will foster research on time and context dependent processes involved in the occurrence of procrastination

Exploring reasons and consequences of academic procrastination: an interview study

Grunschel C, Patrzek J, Fries S. Exploring reasons and consequences of academic procrastination: an interview study. European Journal of Psychology of Education. 2013;28(3):841-861.In the present study, we broadly investigated reasons and consequences of academic procrastination. Additionally, we explored whether students seeking help from student counselling services to overcome academic procrastination (counselling group) report more serious reasons and consequences of academic procrastination than students who procrastinate but seek no counselling support (non-counselling group). We conducted standardized interviews with university students (N = 36, of which 16 belonged to the counselling group) and analysed these using qualitative content analysis and frequency analysis. The reasons and consequences of academic procrastination, each summarized in a separate category system, were manifold. The category systems consisted of 20 main categories in total, subsuming 81 subcategories, of which 32 were inductively developed. The counselling group reported more serious reasons and consequences of academic procrastination than the non-counselling group. Our results suggest considering academic procrastination as a self-regulation failure and contribute to constructing interventions tailored to students' specific needs

Academic procrastination: The perspective of university counsellors

Patrzek J, Grunschel C, Fries S. Academic procrastination: The perspective of university counsellors. International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling. 2012;34(3):185-201