Academic Procrastination among College Students of Jorhat- An Explorative Study

Academic procrastination is a behavior that is very common among students. It involves knowing that an individual needs to finish the academic task before the assigned time but for one or another reason respondents fail to accomplish the task within the expected time frame. It is the practice of doing more pleasurable or less urgent tasks instead of more urgent ones. Individuals often promise themselves not to delay things until the last minute but it happens again. Such procrastination behaviors affect the student’s actual performances in the learning process and lead to feelings of guilt, inadequacy, depression, and self-doubt. The present study is exploratory research carried out to assess the area and gender difference in academic procrastination among College students in the year 2020. A sample of 199 undergraduate students was selected by using Solvin’s formula (N/1+Ne²), where ‘N’ is the total population and ‘e’ is the margin of error. A standard tool named “Procrastination Assessment Scale for Students (PASS)” was used to assess the academic procrastination of the students. The findings revealed that in areas of procrastination majority 61.3 percent of the respondents had an average level of academic procrastination, as most of the respondents (63.81%) sometimes procrastinate in school activities in general also 65.32 percent of respondents sometimes face a problem when they procrastinate in school activities in general. Findings also depict that 49.74 percent definitely want to decrease the tendency to procrastinate in keeping up with weekly reading assignments. It was also revealed from the findings that there was no gender difference in academic procrastination among College students.