Role of Locus of Control and Self-Efficacy in Predicting Academic Procrastination: A Quantitative Analysis

Abstract

The current research aimed at studying about locus of control and self-efficacy acting as possible predictors for academic procrastination among students while also assessing the relationships between all the variables and finding any gender differences among them. Procrastination is a very common phenomena observed in many areas of life but can be specially seen among students in academic settings. Many researches have also found the negative effects of academic procrastination on students so it becomes important to know more about it and how it is related to some other aspects in our daily life. A total of N=100 students were part of the study including males (N=50) and females (N=50). For data collection Procrastination assessment scale –students, Rotter’s locus of control scale and General self-efficacy scale was utilised. After data analysis it was found that locus of control and self-efficacy do act as significant predictors for academic procrastination and there were no significant gender differences found among these.

Introduction

I. INTRODUCTION

A. Academic Procrastination

The act of procrastination can be most often seen in students studying in school and universities. Students most often show procrastination by delaying or postponing doing their homework or assignments till the very last moment. This act of purposefully delaying the initiation of work or delay in finishing an academic assignment is known as academic procrastination. (Soloman and Rothblum 1994) who made the procrastination assessment scale for students have defined academic procrastination as the student’s tendency to delay or put off in a way that they are not completed by the due date or are finished just in time in a rushed manner. (Hayat et al 2020) in their study found that around 29.25% of students nearly always showed academic procrastination and around 48% of students who showed academic procrastination at a moderate level faced a lot of issues due to that in their academic life. Procrastination among individuals is very common and especially in college students (Ellis and Knaus, 1977).

B. Effects of Academic Procrastination

Researches have shown that procrastination among university students is very common and this also has negative consequences for them such as stress (Ashraf et al, 2019). The stress and anxiety of completing or finishing the task at the very end of the deadline has very negative effects upon the mental and overall physical well-being of individuals. Since students attempt their work at the very last moment and keep delaying it they find the need to compensate for time and this may lead to them attempting academic misconduct such as plagiarism or fraudulent excuses (Patrzek et al 2015). Studies have shown that higher level of procrastination could also lead to decreased amounts of level of life satisfaction. Undergraduate students in college who were procrastinators showed decreased levels in terms of life satisfaction in relation to students who do not showcase procrastination. (Ozer and Sackes 2011).

C. Locus of Control

We face a lot of challenging situations in different areas of our life on a daily basis. However how we deal with those situations will be different for each person. . Locus control is defined it as the amount of control a person feels he/she has over their own behaviour. It can either be internal or external. (Rotter, 1954). Individuals possessing internal locus of control tend to be more responsible regarding failures or success and students showcasing internal locus of control show less levels of stress and higher self-esteem compared to those have external inclination (Abouserie, 1994).

Internal locus of control has also been linked to good physical health as well as mental health (Kesavayuth et al 2020).  Locus of control is also very much related to procrastination and can be very commonly seen in academic settings. External locus of control is often seen with increased levels of procrastination and inward locus of control has been seen to be linked to higher levels of academic achievement among undergraduate students. (Parmar & Desai, 2017).

D. Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy can be defined as the overall belief or trust we have in our own capabilities to overcome a problem or to accomplish a goal (Bandura, 1977). This concept was first defined by Bandura who considered it as the person’s belief towards their own ability to complete a task and would also determine how someone feels, behave or think.  Researches have shown that those who show more self-efficacy are more likely to procrastinate in their given academic settings a lot less in comparison to students who had very low self-efficacy who tend to procrastinate more often (Belarga et al 2022). People facing addiction issues often tend to showcase lower levels of self-efficacy. To modify any behaviour one requires the belief in their abilities to change a particular behaviour and individuals with low self-efficacy face a problem in these areas (Diclemente, 1986). Self-efficacy also has a major and positive impact on the psychological well-being among undergraduate students. Similarly, high level of self-efficacy also leads to higher levels of life satisfaction (Siddiqui, 2015).

II. METHODOLOGY

The aim of the study was to assess the role of locus of control and self-efficacy in predicting academic procrastination among students. For this study, the sample population consisted of N=100 (50 males and 50 females) students in universities in the age group of 18 to 25 years and were selected by using a simple random sampling method. Procrastination assessment scale-students (PASS) was used to measure the academic procrastination within students and for this current study only the first part of the tool i.e. the first eighteen questions were used to measure academic procrastination in students. Rotter’s Locus of control scale was used to assess the locus of control among the students. The General self-efficacy scale (GSE) was used to measure the self-efficacy. All data was collected and instructions were properly given to all participants and the consent was also taken before taking responses. It was also made clear that all personal information will be kept confidential and used for academic purposes only. For data analysis linear regression, independent t-tests and correlation were carried out.

III. OBJECTIVES

1. To study gender differences in locus of control, self-efficacy and academic procrastination among students.
2. To study the relationship between locus of control and academic procrastination among students.
3. To study the relationship between self-efficacy and academic procrastination among students.
4. To find if locus of control and self-efficacy can act as predictors for academic procrastination among students.

IV. RESULTS AND DISSCUSSION

Table 1

The results from (Table 1.1) revealed that 12.1% variance in academic procrastination can be explained by locus of control and the p-value obtained is <.001 which is very significant and indicated that locus of control does acts as a significant predictor for academic procrastination.

Table 2-

Further from (Table1.2) it was interpreted that 11.7% variance in academic procrastination can be explained by self-efficacy and the p-value obtained is < .001 so it is significant and indicated that self-efficacy also acts as a significant predictor for academic procrastination.

Table 3-

Table 3 depicts the correlation values between academic procrastination, locus of control and self-efficacy. From the values it was interpreted that academic procrastination has a significant positive correlation with locus of control (r=.348) and was significantly negatively correlated with self-efficacy (r= -.343). Locus of control and self-efficacy also showed significantly negative correlation (r= -.285).

Table 4-

Table 5-

Table 6-

From referring to (Tables 4, 5 and 6) it was observed that there were no significant gender differences in regards with academic procrastination, locus of control and general self-efficacy among students.

The main aim of the current study was to find if locus of control and self-efficacy would act as significant predictors for academic procrastination among students along with finding any gender differences and analysing the relationships between all the variables. The tools that were used for the study to collect data included Procrastination assessment scale-students by Solomon and Rothblum (1984), Locus of control scale given by Julian B. Rotter (1966) and General self-efficacy scale by Schwazer and Jerusalem (1995).

It was hypothesised that Locus of control and self-efficacy will act as significant predictors for academic procrastination among students. From (Table 1) it was inferred that the R square value is .121 which indicates that 12.1% variance in academic procrastination can be explained by locus of control. The p-value obtained is <.001 which indicated that locus of control was a significant predictor for academic procrastination. Aremu et al (2011) also in their study found that locus of control along with self-efficacy acted as significant predictors for academic procrastination in undergraduate students. Similarly from (Table 2) it was inferred that the R square = .117 indicating 11.7% of variance in academic procrastination can be seen by self-efficacy. The p-value obtained was <.001 which showed that self-efficacy was also a significant predictor of academic procrastination among students.

Furthermore for this study it was hypothesised that there would be a significantly positive association between locus of control and academic procrastination among students and a significantly negative association between self-efficacy and academic procrastination among students. As can be seen from (Table 3) that there was a significant positive correlation between locus of control and academic procrastination which indicated that with increase in the levels of locus of control would lead to increase in academic procrastination and with decrease in locus of control academic procrastination also decreases. In this study total scores of locus of control were used and higher scores indicated external locus of control and lower scores indicated internal locus of control. So, based on data analysis participants with external locus of control are more likely to show academic procrastination whereas participants with internal orientation to loci of control will lead to lower levels of academic procrastination. . (Pearlman-Avnion et al 2019) in their study observed that participants with internal orientation towards locus of control had low levels of academic procrastination. (Parmar and Desai 2017) in their study realised that the participants having external locus of control had much higher levels of procrastination. Further (Table 4) results showed that that academic procrastination and self-efficacy have a negative correlation between them which means that with an increase in self-efficacy academic procrastination decreases and with lower levels of self-efficacy academic procrastination increases. Gungor (2020) in his study found significant negative correlation between academic procrastination and self-efficacy.

In regards with gender differences it was found that there were no significant gender differences in terms of academic procrastination, locus of control and general self-efficacy which can be seen through (Tables 4, 5 and 6). Ajayi (2020) found similar results in a study to examine the role of gender in academic procrastination behaviour and academic self-efficacy amongundergraduate students. It was seen that gender did not play a significant role in predicting academic procrastination behaviour.

Conclusion

In conclusion locus of control and self-efficacy were significant predictors for academic procrastination among students. Further analysis showed that there were no gender differences and academic procrastination was positively correlated with self-efficacy and negatively correlated with locus of control.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2023 Namit Madan, Dr. Sidhharth Soni. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.