Procrastination is a problem for just about anyone that you happen upon these days. It seems just a common problem, but it can also lead to certain problems in regulation. Procrastination is the avoidance of performing a particular activity (academic or not) even though it's known that it should be done. One such example would be a term paper which a person was given a substantial amount of time to do, yet left it to be done within the last two days before the due date. One definition of procrastination was given as the act of needlessly delaying tasks to the point of experiencing subjective discomfort (Solomon and Rothblum, 1984). Various studies have been done and it's shown that procrastination is a problem that is more apparent in the academic realm (Ellis and Knaus, 1977). Just as a point of interest, procrastination is more common for term papers than for other tasks, such as studying or assignments. It has been shown that procrastination (academic) can be

In an experiment carried out by the authors of the article (Koestner, Senecal and Vallerand), it was suggested that the autonomous forms of self regulation (intrinsic and identified regulation) are associated with lower rates of procrastination while the less autonomous forms of self regulation lead to higher rates of procrastination. In the actual experiment, questionnaires were completed by 498 French-Canadian students attending a junior college in the Montreal area. (26% of participants were male, with a mean age of 18.6 years) The actual experiment was carried out in the second month of the winter semester and was designed to gain a better feel for what exactly the students were going through in relation to their school activities. In the actual experiment the Academic Motivation Scale (AMS) was used, but the French version. This scale was originally developed for the reason of studying students self-regulation styles (academically). In this study, only four of the original seven types of regulation were assessed; intrinsic motivation to know, external regulation, identified motivation and amotivation. There were assorted answers being asked to the subjects, for example "How guilty do you feel for skipping an assignment?" The responses given to these were all answered on a 7 point scale [from not at all (1) to exactly (7)]. In the Academic procrastination scale was used as well in an attempt to determine the extent to which students delay their work and how these delays affect their feelings of guilt. It was also answered in a 7 point scale [from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7)]. An example of a statement that might have been asked on this survey would be, "I feel very guilty for not having studied enough". There were also four other minor tests done on the subjects; the Self-Esteem Scale, the Depression scale from the Hopkins Symptons Checklist, the Clinical Anxiety Scale and the Demographic Questionnaire. The purposes of these, respectively, were to assess the self esteem of the subject, assess any depressive thoughts the student may be feeling, assess any anxiety the student may be feeling and just general information such as age, sex, grades, duration in school and area of residence.

In the articles that I will refer to, (as stated in the references section) it seems that they all only bolstered the facts that were presented in the original article (Senecal, Koestner and Vallerand) with the exception of a few points that I found interesting. In the article Relationship Between Time Structure and Procrastination it was proposed that individuals delay task performance to experience a rush or thrill by working against a deadline and leaving it til the last possible minute (Ferrari, 1992). In my humble opinion as a self-admitted procrastinator, I think that that is one of the most foolish things I've ever heard. I don't like the feelin

Some common words found in the essay are:
Determination Theory, Structure Procrastination, Demographic Questionnaire, AMS French, Connell Ryan, Senecal Vallerand, Ellis Knaus, Finally Intrinsic, Methods Research, Article Procrastination, intrinsic motivation, autonomous forms, external regulation, identified motivation, actual experiment, identified regulation, academic procrastination, relationship structure procrastination, introjected regulation, regulation identified, structure procrastination, amotivation external regulation, autonomous forms self, forms self regulation, answered 7 scale,
Approximate Word count = 1948
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)