Browsing by Subject "volitio"

The aims of the study. Academic procrastination is a prevalent problem among students whose everyday life is often filled with deadlines. As up to 95 % of procrastinating students would like to decrease their delaying behaviour, and procrastination has many negative outcomes, it is important to study antecedents of procrastination and develop interventions. The current study employs Klingsieck's (2013) definition of procrastination which states that procrastination is "the voluntary delay of an intended and necessary and/or personally important activity, despite expecting potential negative consequences that outweigh the positive consequences of the delay". The purpose of the present study is to extend the current knowledge about motivational and volitional psychology perspective of procrastination, and the following research questions were answered: 1. What factors influence the study motivation of the procrastinating students? 2. What kind of interest do the procrastinating students express in their studies? 3. How do the procrastinating students perceive their self-efficacy to perform their studies? 4. What kind of volitional factors do the procrastinating students mention? Methods. The data consists of transcripted interviews of eight students identified as procrastinators in a previous study. The study is conducted as a qualitative, data-driven content analysis including the development of a category system for each research question. Additionally, these categories are used to create a student profile for each informant. Results and conclusions. The results indicate that procrastinating students had several factors which motivated them to study and they also expressed interest towards their studies. However, only two students expressed strong individual interest. Procrastinating students had doubts about their ability to succeed in their studies and found especially the beginning of their studies difficult due to insufficient skills to study at university. Finally, some of the students had self-regulative problems, and the profiles revealed that students' motivational and volitional features differed from each other. This study supports the view that students have individual patterns for the antecedents of procrastination and for that reason also different kinds of interventions should be available to them.