Academic Procrastination among Undergraduate Nursing Students of Birgunj

Abstract

Background: Academic procrastination is a complex issue leading to decline in student’s wellbeing, academic performance and overall success. The procrastination behavior leads to negative outcomes such as stress, guilt, poor academic performance, low self- esteem, diminished physical and mental health. The objective of the study was to assess the level of academic procrastination among undergraduate nursing students.

Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was adopted among 180 undergraduate nursing students selected by stratified proportionate random sampling technique from the selected nursing college, Birgunj. A self-administered structured questionnaire was used to collect data on socio-demographic information and standard tool Academic Procrastination Scale (APS) was used to assess the level of academic procrastination. The obtained data were entered in SPSS 16 version for data analysis and were analyzed by using descriptive statistics (mean, SD, frequency, percentage) and inferential statistics (chi-square test).

Results: The mean age of the respondents was 22.87±4.12. The study findings revealed that most (83.3%) of nursing students  had low level of academic procrastination and 16.7% of respondents had high level of academic procrastination. There was significant association between the level of academic procrastination and academic year (p-value=0.044). However, there was no any association between the level of academic procrastination and other selected variables.

Conclusion: The study findings concluded that most of students exhibited low levels of academic procrastination, while only few demonstrated high procrastination behaviors. Academic procrastination tends to be associated with academic year. This finding highlights the importance of time management training and counselling, academic support, cognitive refraining, coping strategies training particularly in academic years where higher levels of procrastination are more likely to occur.