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In this study we adopted an impartial view on academic procrastination in order to gain new insights for the development of intervention programs. Following a qualitative approach, we thereby explored antecedents of procrastination by attending to the actual voices and experiences of 29 students. Students' subjective theories were in line with some antecedents that previous research had addressed (lack of motivation or volitional control), but also revealed relatively new aspects of academic procrastination that concern students' social relatedness and task competence. Considering these findings, we suggest ideas on how to assist students and how to design intervention programs.
Procrastination-needlessly putting off until tomorrow what could be done today-is a ubiquitous phenomenon around which a large body of research has evolved in recent decades. Steel (2007) provides a concise summary of the variety of current definitions of procrastination: "To procrastinate is to voluntarily delay an intended course of action, despite expecting to be worse off for the delay" (p. 66). The majority of procrastination research has focused on academic procrastination (e.g., postponement of studying for an exam or writing a term paper), which is highly prevalent in academic contexts. Estimates indicate that up to 70% of college students consider themselves procrastinators (e.g., Schouwenburg, 1995), and that 50% procrasti- nate consistently and problematically (e.g., Solomon & Rothblum, 1984). Students have reported that procrastination typically accounts for more than one third of their daily activities and often manifests itself through sleeping, reading, or watching TV (Pychyl, Lee, Thibodeau, & Blunt, 2000).
Academic Procrastination: Consequences and intervention ProGrAmS
The results of a variety of studies suggest that students often suffer as a result of chronic procrastination for the following reasons. First, procrastination led to underperformance or reduced academic performance (Ferrari, Johnson, & McCown, 1995; Tice & Baumeister, 1997). Second, students who procrastinated experienced less stress early in the semester, but more stress later and more stress overall (Tice & Baumeister, 1997). Procrastinators were also more anxious throughout the entire semester (Rothblum, Solomon, & Murakami, 1986) and more agitated before a test (Lay & Schouwenburg, 1993) compared with students who did not procrastinate. Third, study results show significant negative correlations between self-reported procrastination and health (Sirois, 2004; Sirois, Melia-Gordan, & Pychyl, 2003; Tice & Baumeister, 1997) and between self-reported procrastination...