KIT – Universität des Landes Baden-Württemberg und nationales Forschungszentrum in der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft

The road to hell is paved with good intentions… …Ambulatory Assessment Intervention (AAI) to reduce procrastination in academic settings – A pilot study

Lehrstuhl für Angewandte Psychologie Kontakt: Eliane Dominok M.A. I eliane.dominok@kit.edu

Juni 2013

MEHR DAZU

Procrastination is a chronic pattern of delaying necessary but unpleasant tasks and activities, including academic achievement. A central feature of procrastination is the gap between intention and action behavior ("intention-action-gap").

Ambulatory Assessment (AA) includes a wide range of computer-assisted methods which allow the continuous monitoring of daily life experience. Procrastination is considered as a time-dependent phenomenon (the behavioral pattern changes as a function of time remaining up to the deadline).

Analysis of variance revealed significant main effects for measurement (η2=.306) and group factor (η2=.377) as well as a significant interaction effect measurement*group (η2=.233).The questionnaire data showed a significant decrease of procrastination in the experimental group but not in the control group.

Brief interventions depending on given information on current mood and actual goal achievement: “Did you achieve what you have planned in conjunction with your target-related task for the last 2 hours?”

YES: compliment, suggestion for self-reward, end of query

NO PLANS FOR THE PAST TWO HOURS: end of query

NO: AAI as shown in the illustration below

Randomized control trial, N = 34 Measurement of subjective procrastination by means of the Tuckman Procrastination Scale (t1-t4, german translation)

1.  Seven days of baseline assessment (procrastination behavior in daily life) by using methods of AA

3.  Seven days of training and exercise of volitional competences

4.  Seven days intervention period