Locus of Control and Academic Attributional Style as Predictors of Academic Procrastination Behavior in Sport Science

Abstract

It is known that academic procrastination is a common behaviour among university students. It is inevitable that this situation directly affects the academic life of students. In order to better understand academic procrastination behaviour and to overcome this behaviour, its relationship with locus of control and academic attribution styles was examined in this study. The research was conducted with the relational screening method in order to determine how the variables affect each other. The population of the study consists of undergraduate students studying sports in the 2021-2022 academic year. The sample group is 332 (124 female, 208 male) university students studying at the Faculty of Sport Sciences. Rotter Internal-External Locus of Control Scale, Academic Procrastination Scale and Academic Attribution Styles Scale were used in this study to collect data. SPSS 21.0 statistical package programme was used to evaluate the data and regression analysis method was used to determine the relationship between variables. According to the results obtained from the research, it can be said that the academic procrastination behaviours of the students of the Faculty of Sport Sciences are below the medium level, their locus of control tends to be external control, and their academic attribution styles are pessimistic. Academic procrastination behaviour increases as locus of control belief increases and as students' academic attribution styles become pessimistic. However, when the independent variables were evaluated together, it was observed that only locus of control was a significant predictor of academic procrastination, while academic attribution styles did not have a significant effect.