Forgiveness versus punishment: comparative analysis

Procrastination

Ferrari, et.al. looked at procrastination on academic tasks by college students, comparing students who attended selective colleges with students who attended nonselective colleges. They found that students in both groups procrastinated but for different reasons. At the selective college, procrastination was tied to dislike for the task. At the nonselective college, students worried about not doing a good job on the assignment and about possible social disapproval. One interesting finding was that the students' definitions of what procrastination varied by school. Students at the more selective college more often described themselves as procrastinators than the students at the non-selective school. The writers speculated that students at the more challenging school might be more likely to start on assignments immediately, and view any delay at all as "procrastination." They suspected that students at the more selective school had a stronger school work ethic.

The authors clearly defined that they were going to study academic procrastination among students, but in retrospect did not define "procrastination" clearly enough for the purposes of this study, resulting in the finding that the two groups of students themselves had differing perceptions. This actually enhances the research because it suggests new questions to research in the future.

The rationale for doing this study was only implied. While their review of the literature demonstrated that procrastination was clearly a significant problem for a significant number of students, they did not provide any of the consequences for this behavior. It would have been interesting to know how many of the students, for instance, reported both chronic procrastination and Incompletes on their transcripts. It might be important to know how many of those who described themselves as procrastinators graduated from college within four years. At the end of the study the authors suggested that more research on college work procrastination might result in interventions to help students end such behavior, but the possible negative effects of procrastination on college success and progress toward graduation were not discussed.

The review of the literature was thorough and demonstrated that other researchers have looked at the problem from a variety of perspectives. The authors predicted that procrastinators would provide more excuses for non-completion of work than non-procrastinators. As noted above, they left the definition of procrastination up to the students surveyed. They noted in particular that other researchers had paired a selective with a nonselective school. The review showed that the researchers had a solid foundation for the study they were about to do.

Their methodology was thorough. They matched students for location, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status so that the one significant difference was likely to be the type of college they attended. They had more women than men, reflecting the fact that both schools had more female than male students. Statistical analysis showed no significant differences between the sexes on the questionnaire used.

The authors analyzed the results with statistical rigor, looking at the data from multiple viewpoints and performing analyses to confirm the reliability of their findings. Levels of significance using Chi square analysis ranged from

They noted significant limitations to their study. The classification of the two schools as "selective" or "nonselective" was somewhat arbitrary. While "nonselective" was fairly clear, there are many levels of selectivity among colleges. Other limitations that they used only two schools, had an overrepresentation of female students, and did not define procrastination clearly. In addition the data relied on self-report, which may have biased the findings in multiple ways: highly motivated students may have over-interpreted the behavior of procrastination, while the fact that excuse making is involved in procrastination could have affected how students reported their behavior.

Many questions remain, not surprising in an area that has not yet thoroughly been researched. The rate of procrastination might be compared to GPA, or as suggested earlier, rates of Incompletes on transcripts as well as either graduating on time or the need to attend summer school to graduate on time. Both issues would have very significant financial repercussions for students, who would have to pay extra tuition in order to graduate. As the authors note, it would be interesting to see whether students who work more hours at outside jobs see themselves as procrastinators or simply as people who just don't have enough time to get everything done they need to do.