Along the four years of a student's journey through college, they face many academic challenges, and that is to be expected. One of the challenges they may face is procrastination. “For the purposes of this project, procrastination is defined as, postponing or delaying a decision or the performance of a task” (Van Eerde, 2003). Although some students may not face the challenge of procrastination, many do. For those that do, it is not only interesting, but also important to know what procrastination fully entails. In a previous study, researchers constructed a paradigm model of procrastination to fully grasp the concept (Schraw, Wadkins, & Olafson, 2007). This paradigm model organizes both antecedents and consequences of academic procrastination, both of which this present study will be focusing on. This present study will not only be studying procrastination but also the relationship that it has with sleep (antecedent) and GPA (consequence). Studying these two variables alongside procrastination will hopefully bring significant results that will allow people to further understand procrastination fully.
There has been plenty of research done on the topic of procrastination. In previous studies, there have been different ways that researchers have measured procrastination. In one study, researchers held individual interviews for all their participants to have them give a self-report of their level of procrastination (Schraw, et al., 2016). While in another study, to measure procrastination, the participants were given the Lay General Procrastination Scale (Rabin, Fogel, & Nutter-Upham, 2011). There was another study that used a different procrastination scale- the Irrational Procrastination Scale- however also had all their participants in an introductory psychology course. This course had “19 self-paced chapters” and a final exam. Having the course be self-paced, it allowed room for procrastination that would eventually be measured again with the final exam scores (Steel &Klingsieck, 2016). There are many ways to measure procrastination. These past studies have showed some of the different methods and have pointed out what may be the more common one- procrastination scales.
Procrastination and sleep is another concept that has been studied in the past. Sleep in general is an important topic to address for students in college. This is due to college students having poor sleep quality (Carter, Chopak-Foss, & Punungwe, 2016). Carter, et al. (2016), conducted a study to determine the sleep quality of undergraduate students. To do so, the participants took the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). It was found that students who received poor scores on the PSQI thought that they were relatively good sleepers. This shows that there is a disconnect in student’s perception of their own sleep quality. In a study conducted by Vail- Smith (2009), she used the Sleep Quality Index (SQI) to measure the sleep quality in their participants. They found that 76.6 percent of the participants experienced occasional sleep problems and that 11.8 percent had poor sleep quality (Vail- Smith, 2009). Although these two studies both studied sleep, the results were different because they were looking for different aspects of sleep. In the first study, they were looking to see if the participant’s perception of their sleep quality matched their scores on the PSQI. Whereas, in the second study, a portion of it focused solely on their SQI scores and then related it back to health risk behaviors. In another study, they studied sleep and procrastination together. To do this, they had their participants take the Lay’s General Procrastination scale and a sleep quality questionnaire. With these results, they could find a relationship between procrastination and sleep. They found that procrastination is associated with feeling bad upon waking (Sirois, van Eerde, & Argiropoulou). These results didn’t seem to have to do with number of hours of sleep but instead how well rested someone is when they wake up in the morning which is an interesting way to look at sleep as it relates back to procrastination. The present study is not focused on sleep quality like this study was, however it will be interesting to see if there is a significant relationship between sleep and procrastination just like there was here.
Another important aspect of the present study is procrastination and its relationship with GPA. There has been research done on these two variables in the past. In one study, Tuckman (2002), set up a web-based course for the participants to enroll in. Throughout the course, they had 216 activities to complete with deadlines. Most of the activities were online, and for those ones, if the participants missed the deadline, they received a zero. However, for the remaining activities, they received a grade penalty for late assignments. In the end, the 216 activities were out of a 1,000 point scale. This scale was then converted to letter grades and this is how they determined academic success. To measure procrastination, the participants took the Tuckman Procrastination Scale. This study found that people who were not high procrastinators received higher grades in the course (Tuckman, 2002). In another study, they found that there was a negative correlation between procrastination and GPA. They found this by first having their participants take the Procrastination Assessment Scale- Students (PASS). This scale assessed two different components of procrastination; the frequency of it and the anxiety that is caused by it. This scale separated the low procrastinators from the high procrastinators. Then they also received the participant’s GPAs to then compare them to the scores on the PASS. This was an important finding in that it showed that procrastination was negatively correlated with GPA (Rothblum, Solomon, & Murakami, 1986). This study was different from the first because it used GPA to measure academic performance rather than a course grade. However, they still came to similar results in that high procrastinators do not perform as well academically as do low procrastinators.
In this present study, procrastination is going to be studied alongside two other variables: sleep and GPA. Sleep and GPA both separately have the potential of having a relationship with procrastination. The purpose of this study is to figure out what that relationship is and what it is like. A negative correlation between college GPA and procrastination is predicted. The higher the GPA, the lower the reported level of procrastination. The concept of whether sleep will have a relationship with procrastination is unknown therefore there is a research question to be asked: is there a relationship between amount of sleep and procrastination? This present study will address both the hypothesis and the research question.