Development of a procrastination scale in Spanish and measurement of students’ procrastination tendencies

Abstract

[EN] Academic procrastination (students’ tendency to postpone and/or avoid an academic task) is a widely extended phenomenon in education, especially among university students. However, there is still little research on this topic and no single validated and widely accepted instrument to measure procrastination levels at university level in Spain has been developed yet. This study aimed to cover this gap and develop a procrastionation scale adapted from two existing instruments and to measure the procrastination tendencies of a sample of 529 students from two different universities. The results showed that the Escala de Procrastinación Académica en español (EPAE) has excellent reliability (a = .929). In addition, over 17% of the sample reported high procrastination levels. Although further research is needed, this preliminary study sheds light on this topic and contributes to the development of a measurement instrument that may be used to monitor student learning and identify, among other issues, students at risk of dropout