Psychometric properties of the academic procrastination scale in Spanish university students

Abstract

Procrastination in academic activities is common amongst university students, and has negative consequences for their personal as well as academic development. As a result, there is a need for valid –yet at the same time brief and clear-cut– measurement tools that enable the specific procrastinating behaviour of university students to be measured. This work explores in depth the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Academic Procrastination Scale, a widely used brief tool in secondary and higher education in the Spanish speaking world. The scale was applied to a total of 1734 university students, together with the Procrastination Assessment Scale-Students (PASS), the Unintentional Procrastination Scale (UPS) and the Active Procrastination Scale (APS). Factor analyses indicate the best fit is a structure involving four interrelated factors (task aversion, poor time management, low emotional and motivational self-control, and risk assumption) compared to other proposed models. The model presents factorial invariance between men and women, and adequate convergent validity. We discuss the implications of using this scale in higher education, since differentiating the four factors might help to identify different support measures depending on university student needs.