Academic Self-Efficacy, Procrastination, and Attrition Intentions

Abstract

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Why do students leave universities? The current study addresses the problem of academic attrition from the perspective of students’ intentions. Specifically, we focus on the roles of academic self-efficacy and procrastination in exploring their relationships with attrition intentions. Based on existing research, we expected a negative relationship between academic self-efficacy and attrition intentions, with procrastination as a possible mediator. Furthermore, it was expected that this relationship would differ depending on the type of attrition (i.e., drop-out, transfer university, transfer study field). These hypotheses were investigated among Norwegian students in a questionnaire study (N = 693). Results showed that procrastination partially mediated the relationship between academic self-efficacy and three attrition intentions categories. Although procrastination was a significant mediator of self-efficacy for all types of intentions, the sizes of the direct and indirect effects were different. We conclude that academic procrastination is important in understanding the relationship between students’ self-efficacy beliefs and attrition intentions.

Keywords

• academic attrition
• attrition intentions
• drop-out
• transfer-out
• academic self-efficacy
• procrastination