Predicting Drop-Out Intentions From Students' Perceptions of Academic Feedback and Procrastination Tendencies. 'Can Personalized Feedback Sometimes Be Too Much of a Good Thing?'

Abstract

In this research, we investigated a three-way relationship between academic feedback, procrastination tendencies, and the intention of dropping out of school in a sample of 532 undergraduate students. We used a cross-sectional, associative research design, with scales developed based on corroborating themes, obtained in previous interviews with the students, with instruments from the literature. The models were tested using variance-based SEM (PLS) and our measurements showed very good psychometric properties. The study's findings indicate that overall, academic feedback is negatively associated with both procrastination and drop-out intention, but when the personalization aspect of the academic feedback is differentiated from the 'impersonal' academic feedback, it might not help mitigate the intention to drop out. Our findings provide additional support to existing research while opening a new line of inquiry into the interplay between the three main constructs mentioned above, which, to date, are scarcely studied together. Albeit with several conceptual and methodological limitations, educational researchers and educators can benefit from the evidence provided in this research.