Are Decision-Making Styles, Locus of Control, and Average Grades in Exams Correlated with Procrastination in University Students?

Abstract

In this paper decision-making styles, locus of control, and average grades in exams are examined as correlates of procrastination in a sample of 185 university students (mainly female students) recruited from mandatory courses for degrees in psychology and pedagogy at the University of Catania (Italy). Method: We used the Decisional Procrastination Scale (Ferrari, Johnson, & McCown, 1995), consisting of five Likert-type items useful for analyzing the procrastination; the Decision-Making Styles (Di Nuovo & Magnano, 2013), chosen for measuring the doubtfulness, delay, proxy, and no problem styles with 15 Likert-type items; the Locus of Control of Behavior Scale (Craig, Franklin, & Andrews, 1984) used to evaluate internal and external loci of control. The data were gathered through an online anonymous questionnaire and were analyzed using the multiple linear regression model to assess how styles of decision-making, locus of control, and average grades in exams affect the decision to procrastinate in university students. The main findings of this study indicate that doubtfulness and delay decision-making styles correlate with high decisional procrastination together with low average grades at university exams. Locus of control is excluded by the proposed model. Conclusions: These findings suggest pursuing a deeper investigation of the various types of procrastination and the measures used for analyzing the academic achievement in university students.

Role of Decision-Making Styles and Intolerance of Uncertainty on Procrastination During the Pandemic

“…Confirming the H2, the freshmen who use dysfunctional decision-making styles tended to postdate the tasks to do and how to do them; it means that the more the freshmen adopt strategies of decision-making ineffective for solving critical situations, the more they tend to procrastinate their choices about the realization of activities or the planning of behaviors to be adopted in various situations such as the academic context. Also in this case, these evidences are in line with the previous results found by Handayani and Andromeda (2017), Sagone and Indiana (2021), but incoherent with those of Santosa (2017); for instance, in the same academic context, Sagone and Indiana (2021) found that the more the university students tend to procrastinate their decisions, the more they are likely to adopt dysfunctional decision-making styles, and the doubtfulness and the delay are predominantly used by the Italian university students attending the Psychology and Pedagogy degree courses. On the contrary, the findings of Santosa revealed an insignificant inverse relationship between decision-making styles (measured using the GDMSQ: Scott, et al, 1995) and academic procrastination (analyzed with the APS: McCloskey & Scielzo, 2015).…”

“…According to regression analysis, the results indicated that only one style of decision-making (that is, doubtfulness) and the inhibitory intolerance of uncertainty positively affected decisional procrastination: it means that the freshmen who adopt a style characterized by doubts and emotional interference regarding their choices tend to poorly tolerate the uncertainty. This evidence confirmed the results obtained by Ferrari and Dovidio (2000), Indiana (2021), andMansouri et al (2021). For instance, Mansouri et al (2021) found that decisional procrastination can be predicted by self-compassion, fear of failure, and intolerance of uncertainty in a sample of 440 Iranian post-graduate students.…”

“…On the other hand, few studies have examined this phenomenon in people without psychological disorders or emotional disease and this reason has supported the current exploratory study in the Sicilian context with healthy freshmen. So, the tendency to procrastinate in students has been analyzed in relation to the styles of decision-making (Sagone & Indiana, 2021;Mansouri, et al, 2021) and the intolerance of uncertainty (Ferrari, et al, 1995), even if these correlations need further deepening.…”

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“…It may entail either procrastinating or transferring the responsibility for making decisions to someone else (i.e., buck-passing). Studies have reported performance to be positively related to vigilance (Kornilova et al, 2018) and negatively related to procrastination (Sagone & Indiana, 2021;, but its relationship with the other decision-making styles remains undetermined.…”

Do Cognitive Dispositions and Gender Matter in Applications of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy? A Pilot Study at an Iraqi University

“…It may entail either procrastinating or transferring the responsibility for making decisions to someone else (i.e., buck-passing). Studies have reported performance to be positively related to vigilance (Kornilova et al, 2018) and negatively related to procrastination (Sagone & Indiana, 2021;Steel, 2007), but its relationship with the other decision-making styles remains undetermined.…”