Phenomenology of serious acdemic procrastination among postgraduate students

Abstract

Procrastination is the delay of an important task in favor of a less important one. Procrastination has a lot of negative effects in a wide range of life spheres; however, it is especially a big problem in academics. Academic procrastination a troublesome phenomenon for almost all university students to some extent, and it has widely been studied in undergraduate students in Western countries with less emphasis on its intensity and related cognitions. Therefore the cognitions related to the experience of extreme academic procrastination need to be explored. The need of such a study is even more evident when considering postgraduate students in Asian context because it is understudied in this milieu. The current study explored the cognitions related to the experience of extreme and problematic (serious) procrastination among postgraduate students of Malaysia. Eight participants were selected to take part in this study based on their extreme scores (more than 48) on the Tuckman procrastination scale and a self report that they find procrastination in education to be one of their biggest problems. All participants were then interviewed to find out about their experience of serious procrastination. The interviews were then analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. The result of the analysis showed one master themes called 'concept of procrastination: getting blurred and running away'; under this master theme, five superordinate themes emerged i.e. indecision, calming down by putting away important thing, control from outside oneself, generalized delay affecting education more, and perceived consequences of delay.