[DOWNLOAD] "Prevalence of Procrastination in the United States, United Kingdom, And Australia: Arousal and Avoidance Delays Among Adults." by North American Journal of Psychology * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Prevalence of Procrastination in the United States, United Kingdom, And Australia: Arousal and Avoidance Delays Among Adults.
- Author : North American Journal of Psychology
- Release Date : January 01, 2005
- Genre: Education,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 207 KB
Description
No systematic study has examined the global prevalence of chronic procrastination--the purposive delay in starting or completing tasks. In the present study, adult samples from the United States (122 women, 85 men), United Kingdom (143 women, 96 men), and Australia (124 women, 90 men) completed reliable and valid self-report measures of arousal procrastination (delays motivated by a "last-minute" thrill experience) and avoidant procrastination (delays related to fears of failure or success). Both men and women from the United Kingdom reported higher rates of arousal and avoidance procrastination compared to adults from the United States and Australia. However, when both procrastination types were separated statistically into "pure types" there were no significant differences across countries: 11.5% of adults self-identified as arousal procrastinators, and 9.9% of adults as avoidant procrastinators. Results indicated that chronic procrastination prevalence is common among westernized, individualistic, English-speaking countries; further epidemiological cross-cultural studies are needed. It has been estimated that procrastination (i.e., frequent delays in starting and/or completing tasks to deadline: Ferrari, Johnson, & McCown, 1995) is common by around 70% of college students for academic-specific tasks (Ellis & Knaus, 1977), yet as high as 20% among normal adult men and women for everyday, daily life events such as paying bills and planning for personal health issues (Harriott & Ferrari, 1996). While it seems that procrastination rates decrease with age, Ferrari et al. (1995) proposed that these rates reflect different forms of procrastination, with the former an example of situational-specific task delays and the latter indicative of chronic, dispositional delay behavior patterns. That is, college students may engage in delay of studying but not in other aspects of their life (e.g., at part-time jobs or engaging in social events). In contrast, there are persons who frequently, almost chronically engage in task delays as a maladaptive lifestyle (Ferrari et al. 1995; Ferrari & Pychyl, 2000). It is the chronic, frequent delays that are the interest of the present exploratory study.