Why university students procrastinate their academic tasks

Considerable attention has been given to university settings in order to understand and treat those factors that positively or negatively affect students’ awareness about learning and study strategies. The aim of the present research was to analyze the role played by anxiety on metacognitive beliefs about procrastination, decisional procrastination, and time management. 281 students of the University of Foggia, Italy (F = 260, M = 21; Mage = 21.26; SD = 4.2), were enrolled during the first semester. They were asked to fill out a questionnaire composed by: socio-anagraphic section, the Metacognitive Beliefs About Procrastination Questionnaire, the procrastination subscale of the Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire, and two subscales of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory, i.e., the Anxiety and the Time Management scales. Correlational analyses showed that anxiety was associated negatively with positive and negative beliefs about procrastination and decisional procrastination and positively with time management; positive beliefs about procrastination were associated negatively with time management and positively with decisional procrastination. As these results highlighted the influence of anxiety on the above mentioned factors that are important for raising academic achievement levels, further studies are needed to better explore this issue related to students’ performance.