Development of a procrastination scale in Spanish and measurement of education students’ procrastination levels

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. Academic procrastination is a widely extended phenomenon in education, especially among university students, which consists of deliberately putting off or completely avoiding an activity under one’s control. High levels of procrastination are related to poor academic performance and dropout intentions, as well as other psychological features such as impulsiveness, distractibility, depression and sensation-seeking, and a lack of self-control, of self-efficacy, of organization and of self-esteem. In Spain research on this topic is scarce and to date not a single validated and widely accepted instrument to measure academic procrastination levels at university level has been developed. The aim of this research study was 1) to develop a procrastionation scale in Spanish language to be used on college students, and 2) to measure theprocrastination levels of education students. METHOD. Data were collected from a sample of 499 Spanish education college students with a Likert scale. RESULTS. The results showed a 24-item version of the Escala de Procrastinación Académica en español (EPAE) with excellent reliability (.908), which may be used to measure students’  procrastination tendencies. Cluster analysis revealed four groups depending on students’ procrastination level (low, low-medium, medium, above medium). Over 76% of the sample had low and low-medium procrastination levels, whilemore than 23% reported medium levels, while not a single student showed higher procrastination levels. DISCUSSION. These results point at a need for further researching this topic in Spain by making use of the validated and reliable scale presented here, which may help to monitor student learning. By designing interventions targeted at high procrastinators, the risk of dropout and low academic performance may be reduced.