A Systematic Review of Interventions to Reduce Academic Procrastination and Implications for Instructor-based Classroom Interventions

Abstract

Academic procrastination is a prevalent and pernicious self-regulation failure, which affects students’ academic performance, health, and well-being. We conducted a systematic review of the recent (i.e., 2018 and subsequent) literature on the efficacy of interventions designed to reduce academic procrastination in several relevant online databases. Twenty-one studies, which matched our criteria for inclusion, were included in our review. These studies reported on a variety of interventions; 17 of them reported significant reductions in students’ academic procrastination. Our research adds to the existing literature on procrastination by identifying critical recent findings from academic procrastination intervention research. In addition, our review identified gaps in the existing literature that should be explored in future research, such as the lack of interventions focusing on strengthening conscientiousness and the need to conduct mediation and moderation analyses to understand the mechanism(s) through which interventions affect procrastination and identify boundary conditions for their effectiveness. Finally, we included a set of recommendations to guide teachers/instructors when selecting procrastination interventions they could feasibly implement in their classrooms.