Abstract
Academic procrastination is a prevalent and pernicious self-regulation failure, which affects students’ academic performance, health, and well-being. We conducted a systematic review of the recent (i.e., 2018 and subsequent) literature on the efficacy of interventions designed to reduce academic procrastination in several relevant online databases. Twenty-one studies, which matched our criteria for inclusion, were included in our review. These studies reported on a variety of interventions; 17 of them reported significant reductions in students’ academic procrastination. Our research adds to the existing literature on procrastination by identifying critical recent findings from academic procrastination intervention research. In addition, our review identified gaps in the existing literature that should be explored in future research, such as the lack of interventions focusing on strengthening conscientiousness and the need to conduct mediation and moderation analyses to understand the mechanism(s) through which interventions affect procrastination and identify boundary conditions for their effectiveness. Finally, we included a set of recommendations to guide teachers/instructors when selecting procrastination interventions they could feasibly implement in their classrooms.
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The research reported in this article was supported by a Summer Research Scholarship awarded by Victoria University of Wellington to the first author. The authors would like to thank the editor and three reviewers for their very helpful comments and feedback regarding an earlier version of this article.
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Notes
1. For an earlier example of an app-based intervention, interested readers are referred to Davis & Abbitt (2013).
2. Consistent with theoretical accounts of procrastination (e.g., Sirois & Pychyl, 2013; Steel, 2007), the effects of an intervention might be mediated by several factors (e.g., impulsivity, length of deadlines, ability to regulate task-related aversive emotions, etc.). If no (reliable) information is available regarding the differential effectiveness of interventions targeting procrastination via different mediators, a natural first step would be to intervene on the mediator(s) that would be the cheapest to alter.
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Turner, M., Hodis, F.A. A Systematic Review of Interventions to Reduce Academic Procrastination and Implications for Instructor-based Classroom Interventions. Educ Psychol Rev 35, 118 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-023-09838-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-023-09838-x