The influence of active procrastination: a profile on Educational Sciences students' academic achievement

INTRODUCTION. Passive procrastination is the behavioral tendency to delay the academic task due to a self-regulation failure. This behavior is associated with low academic achievement. In recent years a different construct has been identified-active procrastination-which implies the ability to deliberately delay tasks as to perform them more effectively. The research aims were: a) to analyze the profiles of active delay presented by students of the Educational Sciences, and b) to examine their differences according to gender and academic achievement. METHOD. The research involved 330 university students. The New Active Procrastination Scale was applied to obtain the profiles of the construct. A hierarchical Cluster analysis was performed with scale factors, a chi-square analysis crossing the Clusters and gender, and an univariate analysis of ANOVA variances with academic performance. RESULTS. The results showed: a) the existence of four profiles among the students, named Active Procrastination, Passive Procrastination, Moderate Active Procrastination and Non-Procrastination; b) women had a non-procrastination profile to a greater extent than men; c) students with active procrastination and non procrastination profiles presented an academic performance significantly superior to the performance of students with passive procrastination. DISCUSSION. On the one hand, according to the analyzed construct, students who present active procrastination have the ability to delay their academic tasks in order to achieve higher performance as they are accustomed to working under pressure and managing work time. And on the other hand, those who present passive procrastination must be the object of intervention programs at the university in order to learn to organize themselves in their studies and overcome their failures of self-regulation.