Academic Procrastination among African-American College Students

Abstract

This study examined the generality to African-American college students of previous findings regarding the prevalence of students' procrastination and their reasons for procrastinating. The Procrastination Assessment Scale—Students of Solomon and Rothblum was administered to 184 African-American college students. This scale measures the frequency of procrastination on a variety of academic tasks as well as reasons for procrastinating on writing a term paper. A high number of subjects reported nearly always or always procrastinating on studying for examinations ( n = 52), writing a term paper ( n = 55), and reading weekly assignments ( n = 66). Also, a high number of subjects reported that such procrastination was nearly always or always a problem ( n = 60 for studying for exams, n = 46 for writing a term paper, and n = 63 for reading weekly assignments). Factor analysis of the reasons for procrastinating on writing a term paper identified two primary factors, Evaluation Anxiety and Task Aversiveness. These results are very similar to those obtained in 1984 by Solomon and Rothblum who examined procrastination among Caucasian students, suggesting that self-reported procrastination patterns are quite general among college students.