The relationship between procrastination and academic achievement of high school learners in North West province, South Africa

Abstract

The present study explored whether a significant relationship exists between academic procrastination and academic achievement in high school learners within South Africa. It furthermore examined whether certain personality traits of individuals are more prone to procrastination than others. It lastly investigated the relationships between gender and academic procrastination, age and academic procrastination, number of siblings and academic procrastination; and area of residence and academic procrastination. The research sample consisted of 349 high school learners aged between 12 and 19 years old (n=167 male, n=180 female, n=2 gender not disclosed). Data was collected by means of the Personal Information Questionnaire (PIQ), the Tuckman Procrastination Scale (TPS) and the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI). A significant negative correlation was found between procrastination and academic achievement. The correlations between procrastination and gender, age, area of residence and number of siblings respectively were not significant. Conscientiousness and Emotional Stability were both found to be significantly negatively related to procrastination, however, the relations between procrastination and Extraversion and Agreeableness respectively were not significant. An anomaly found in the present study was the negative relation between procrastination and Openness to Experience, and it is postulated that this finding may be due to the TIPI’s inability to measure the individual facets of each Big Five Factor domain or that it could be ascribed to the need for cognition.