My research investigation had come to an end after weeks of work. Even though it was stressful it was also very rewarding to explore the topic with my classmates and observing and learning their expectations with the group works and assignments pressure during this course. Thank you all for being a part of this journey with me.
Just to recall your memory, my research topic for this project was to find the relation between academic procrastination of university students and their assignment performances to determine how the student’s academic procrastination could impact the student’s academic achievement. The main focus of my research was to investigate where the students place their attitude and values in education.
Throughout this project, one of my weakness was trying to remain objective. Since the procrastination topic was most talked about almost everywhere I approached this topic with some pre-existing beliefs about how the procrastination works or how it affects the students which at times posed as a problem for my research. I thought that most of the students felt the same way as I did about the procrastination and the similar opinions would make it easier for my research but I must say I was kind of wrong about it as I went on with the research.
In order overcome by biased opinion/beliefs, we circulated google surveys with over 50 people we also had an interview with the focus group to get better and in-depth answers to our focus questions.
It was a little difficult to come up with the research focus questions and for that, we had to go through three trials before finalizing the questions. Together with the consultations from our course leader Maria we also made good use of George Soros’ General Theory of Reflexivity (2009) “thinking participants” by asking our friends to take a look at our draft survey forms and give us any kind of feedbacks of suggestions to improve. After the third draft, our survey questions were finally good to send it out to the participants. With the help of (N. Whiteman’s guide on How to Write Good Survey Questions), we used it to form our focus group questions for the other group to answer. We also put a disclaimer at the beginning of the survey to make sure that the participants knew their role in our research and what the research was about what our objective was. Even during the interview, I again mentioned the same information verbally to our focus group to remind them why they were there.
The most obvious obstacle was my time management. I found that with the outbreak of this new COVID19 virus, it made the situation even worse. Since we were mostly locked in our house I found it extremely difficult to focus because I was mostly with my family and when we are together I rarely get anything done cause all we do it watch moves, cook or we’re always doing something which makes it difficult for me to just ignore them and focus on the assignment. Originally, we were trying to get more in-depth with the research by getting more people involved but due to the virus we had to negotiate and instead, we did an online interview with the other focus group from out tutorial class.
As much as I would like to think that I have got all my research questions answered the relation between academic procrastination of university students and their assignment performances to determine how the student’s academic procrastination could impact the student’s academic achievement and where the students place their attitude and values in education. I think there’s always a room for improvement so here are some of the findings to offer a small insight into our research.
- Despite students knowing that procrastination leads to poorer academic performance, they rarely try to overcome it and instead believe that the pressure to perform enables them to complete the assignments.
- Procrastination mostly brings a negative attitude in the students which results in lower grades or affects their mental health.
- Students are merely putting off their work because they lack motivation or just don’t thinks its important and just suffer last minute by fighting deadlines at the end.
- Some of the students think procrastination related to a self- reliance behaviour because if one is used to working alone and finds the self-capable of working well by themselves then they probably have lower tendency to work alone or it can be seen also in a way that they tend to procrastinate because they believe they can do it well by themselves so they push it up to the last minute.
Working on this research project was stressful but at the same time, a very wonderful journey and it has helped to better understand how students procrastinate and the affects and how to avoid and so on. I will try to implement the solutions given by some of our participants in my daily life to lessen my procrastination habit. Thank you all!
References
- Subscribe to the FT to read: Financial Times Soros: General Theory of Reflexivity. (2009, October 27). Retrieved April 1, 2020, from https://www.ft.com/content/0ca06172-bfe9-11de-aed2-00144feab49a
- Whitman, N. (2020, March 17). How to Write Good Survey Questions. Retrieved April 1, 2020, from https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/how-to-write-good-survey-questions
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