Psychological Well-Being and Its Relationship with Active and Passive Procrastination: A Study on Students of a Business University in Karachi

Abstract

Procrastination has been seen as a dysfunctional and an unproductive behavior, which impacts the psychological well-being negatively. However, a study by Chu and Choi (2005) gave a different perspective to procrastination by dividing it into active and passive (traditional) procrastination. This present study examines how psychological well-being is related to the two dimensions of procrastination, since different forms might have different effects on psychological well-being. It was hypothesized that high psychological well-being will be positively correlated with active procrastination and low psychological well-being will be negatively correlated with passive procrastination. For the research, 120 participants form Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi were selected, between the ages of 18 to 24. Morgan and Choi’s Active Procrastination Scale, Chu and Choi’s Passive Procrastination Scale, and Ryff’s Scales of Psychological Well-Being were used. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to find out the influences of active and passive procrastination on psychological wellbeing. The two predictors account for 88% of the variance in psychological wellbeing, F (2,117) = 5.679, p<0.05, R2=.0.88. The relationship between active procrastination and psychological wellbeing and passive procrastination and psychological wellbeing was investigated using Pearson correlation coefficient. The results showed that there is a small positive correlation between the active procrastination and psychological wellbeing (r=0.243, N=120, p<0.05) and a small negative correlation between the two (r=-0.023, N=120, p<0.05). Independent T-test was used to determine the link between psychological well-being, active procrastination, passive procrastination and gender. For Active Procrastination there was no significant difference in the scores of males and females as the magnitude of the differences in the means was very small (eta squared= 0.00038); for Passive Procrastination there was no significant difference in the scores of males and females as the magnitude of the differences in the means was very small (eta squared= 0.0011); and for Psychological Wellbeing there was no significant difference in the scores of males and females as the magnitude of the differences in the means was very small (eta squared=0.0585).

DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2016.v5n3p87