Qualitative Study Of Procrastination

Procrastination is a complex, common psychological behavior phenomenon. Chronic procrastination leads to poor performance and has negative impact on individual’s physical and mental health. Thus, it is vitally important and necessary to rich the existing theory and provide a theoretical basis for procrastination intervention through conducting an in-depth study to explore the performance, related factors, results and coping strategies of procrastination.This study uses qualitative method, in order to carry on an in-depth study of the procrastination among master graduate students. The purpose is to explore the performance, related factors, results and coping strategies of procrastination, on this foundation the types of procrastination would be extracted thereby providing suggestions. Using semi-structural interview syllabus, this research conducts22hours interview among9master graduate students. During the research,12-thousand-word research log and186-thousand tape-recorded data were collected. The results are as following:(1)The definition of procrastination of graduate students has been given from three aspects:action, cognition and emotion. This is reflected in that one can’t start or complete something in predicted time though he can predicted the negative results and still delays the task to the deadline or can’t complete it,which also contains his irrational beliefs and thoughts of rationalizing procrastination, at the same time following the feelings of anxiety, pain, compunction and regret, which is different from decisions made its priority. The areas of procrastination of graduate students are: academic procrastination, everyday life procrastination and decision procrastination.(2)The reasons of procrastination of graduate students are that:previous experiences, internal and external causes. Previous experiences include early perfect image, influence of family, habit and reinforcement. Internal causes include:emotion, motivation, characteristics, capacity of time management and capacity of self control. External causes include:nature of the task and environment factor.(3)The results of procrastination of graduate students show in three aspects: action, cognition and emotion. On one hand, because of non-compliance results students are suffering and low self-esteem. On the other hand, they experience high self-esteem because of the high efficiency. (4)Graduate students can’t stand their procrastination, so they adopt some strategies. Because of the internal and external factors, coping strategies can’t be long-term effective.(5)The performance, reasons, results, and coping strategies of procrastination are interrelated and interacting. Some factors produce procrastination. To some extent, the results of procrastination will affect the behavior. If one wants to change procrastination, he must take effective coping strategies.(6)Based on the reasons of procrastination, the procrastination of graduate students can be divided into four types:task oriented delays, environment oriented procrastination, self-esteem oriented procrastination and habit oriented procrastination. This distinction will help graduate students understand the main reason of their own procrastination and provide an entry point for improving the procrastination.