The art of waiting until the last moment to complete a task is an “educational epidemic” among college students, study suggests
According to research carried out at several Swedish universities, the procrastinationor better known as «leave everything for the last day», can promote the appearance of health problems. From this common practice among students, they do not usually derive only mental health consequencesbut also in the Physical Healtheven up to nine months later.
The results of the research, published in the scientific journal JAMA Network Openhave revealed the most common study habits in a sample of more than 3,500 studentsat three different times, in order to assess whether procrastination was associated with worse health data.
The art of waiting until the last moment to complete a task is a «educational epidemic» among university students, the study suggests. At least half of students put off their homework for the last minute, according to the results.
Furthermore, this study comes to disprove a theory emerging from earlier research, which suggested that “experienced tipsters control their timing better«.
The authors are blunt and describe procrastination as “a form of failure self-regulatory linked to personality traits such as impulsiveness, absent-mindedness, and low conscientiousness,” and may even influence academic success.
«Students who study university have high levels of freedom and little structure, which imposes high demands on their ability to self-regulate«, have concluded the authors of the study, who add that these high demands can create a ‘snowball’ effect in people prone to procrastination.
The study collected data at three different moments of the school year.
the researchers conducted surveys via the Internet at three different times during the school year, including the last month. The researchers considered that this period was “adequate for procrastination to manifest its possible associations with different health outcomes.”
In the study, the scientists found that, although weak, links existed between procrastination and poor mental, physical and financial health. Ultimately, the researchers urged the students to stop procrastinating on your schoolwork. “Given that procrastination is prevalent among college students, these findings may be important for improving understanding of student health,” they noted.
As related to SMC Spain, the scientific director of the Center for Biomedical Research in Mental Health Network (CIBERSAM), head of the Psychiatry and Psychology Service at the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona and professor at the University of Barcelona, Eduard Vietahas stressed that the results of the study “are not surprising.”
“The article is of some interest, although the results are not particularly novel. The study is methodologically correct and indicates that those students who report high levels of procrastination (that is, those who do not practice that ‘Do not leave for tomorrow what you can do today‘) end, over time, referring to major mental health problems in the sphere of depression, anxiety, and somatizations“, he pointed out.
The expert highlighted that the results suggest that the identification of procrastination behaviors “would allow early identification of some mental health problems”. “It is the same thing that happens with insomnia, for example, which is known to be a predictor of present and future poor mental health, although somewhat unspecific,” he added in this regard.