The Mediating Role of Metacognitive Self-Regulation on Student

Procrastination and Academic Performance

Hariz Enggar Wijaya

Department of Psychology, Islamic University of Indonesia, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Keywords: Metacognitive Self-Regulation, Procrastination, Academic Performance.

Abstract: The current study intends to investigate the link between procrastination, academic performance, and

metacognitive self-regulation, as well as the mediation role of metacognitive self-regulation between

procrastination and academic performance. There were 199 undergraduate students of psychology

participated in this study. They were administered metacognitive self-regulation scale, pure procrastination

scale, and also reported their recent Grade Point Average (GPA). Results indicate that procrastination

correlated significantly and negatively with metacognitive self-regulation. In line with that, metacognitive

self-regulation has a positive and significant association with GPA. Furthermore, metacognitive self-

regulation fully mediated the link between procrastination and GPA.

1 INTRODUCTION

Having a good standard to meet academic attaining is

demanding for the student. But in fact, many students

reported had a problem dealing with an academic

deadline. Postponing to start or complete assignment

being an issue in this context, it is procrastination.

(Özer, Demir and Ferrari, 2009) have investigated

among 784 undergraduate students in Turkey, 52% of

them describe themselves as procrastinators. The

three most problematic assignment according to the

student is studying for an examination, writing term

papers, and reading assignments.

Procrastination seems to occur not only in the

certain culture but across the nation and culture.

(Ferrari, O’Callaghan and Newbegin, 2005) have

reported from United States, United Kingdom, and

Australia samples, that 11% of the participants

labelled themselves as chronic arousal procrastinators

and 9.9% as chronic avoidant procrastinators. In

accordance with that, (Ferrari et al., 2007) also

highlighted this prevalence which takes place across

the six nations: Spain, Peru, Venezuela, the United

Kingdom, Australia, and the United States.

In the Indonesian context, based on (Adrianta and

Tjundjing, 2007) survey, from 316 samples of

undergraduate students in Surabaya, Indonesia, there

are 30.9% students reported having high

procrastination. In line with that, (Ursia, Siaputra and

Sutanto, 2013) also underlined high academic

procrastination, for about 56.7% on undergraduate

student. Recently, high procrastination of

undergraduate student has reported of 36% (Wijaya

and Tori, 2018). Three academic demands reported as

highly perceived as a problem are writing papers,

weekly reading assignments, and studying for exams.

Procrastination referred to as a “voluntary delay

of an intended action despite the recognition that this

delay may have a negative effect” (Sirois and Pychyl,

2016). The main problem of procrastination is not the

absence of intention, but the consequence to acting as

it was initiated at the beginning, namely intention-

action gap (Steel et al., 2018). High procrastinate

student does have the intention to finish any task or

assignment, they make any planning, but in the end,

they fail to meet the deadline or standard. As a

consequence, the student feels more stress (Sirois,

2013), anxiety, depressed, less life satisfaction

(Beutel et al., 2016), and less well-being (Krause and

Freund, 2014). Furthermore, it has a detrimental

effect on academic performance (Steel, 2007; Klassen

et al., 2010).

Numerous studies have linked procrastination

with metacognitive self-regulation (Park and

Sperling, 2012; de Palo et al., 2017; Ziegler and

Opdenakker, 2018). This association could be

described by the lens of self-regulation theory, where

procrastination seen as a self-regulation failure

(Wolters, 2003; Park and Sperling, 2012). The term

Wijaya, H.

The Mediating Role of Metacognitive Self-Regulation on Student Procrastination and Academic Performance.

DOI: 10.5220/0008407700570062

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Learning Innovation (ICLI 2018), pages 57-62

ISBN: 978-989-758-391-9

metacognition can be defined as thinking about our

own mind, which places our own cognition as a

central object of thinking (Veenman, 2015). When

student employs metacognition, it is not only

activated how to acquire and to use an information,

but also metacognitive skill such as goal setting,

planning, monitoring, and evaluation. By controlling

one’s own cognition, it can minimize procrastinate

behaviour.

Metacognitive self-regulation is closely related to

academic performance as well as procrastination.

(Richardson, Abraham and Bond, 2012) have

denounced that metacognition correlates positively

and significantly on academic performance. Similar

to that finding, (Dent and Koenka, 2016) have

underlined the relationship between those variables.

High metacognitive self-regulation associated with

high academic performance, though it differs depends

on the academic performance indicator that has

chosen. Metacognitive self-regulation correlates with

standardizing achievement test, average grade across

a course, and assignment, but not GPA.

Based on the previous background, this present

study would address three hypotheses. First,

procrastination will be negatively related to

metacognitive self-regulation. Secondly,

metacognitive self-regulation will be positively

associated with GPA. Thirdly, metacognitive self-

regulation will be mediating the relationship between

procrastination and GPA.

2 METHOD

2.1 Participant

There were 199 undergraduate students participated

in this study. They were from the psychology

department of the Islamic University of Indonesia, 44

males (20%) and 155 females (80%). All participants

were from the cognitive psychology course of a

private university in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

2.2 Instruments

This present study administrated two questioners to

collect the data. There are metacognitive self-

regulation scale and pure procrastination scale.

Participants reported themselves their recent Grade

Point Average (GPA) by filling the questioners. It

ranging from 0 to 4 point index.

The metacognitive self-regulation subscale is a

self-report scale, part of Motivated Strategies for

Learning Questionnaires (MSLQ), which developed

by (Pintrich et al., 1993). It has 15 subscales and can

be administrated separately (Duncan and Mckeachie,

2005). For this current study, we administrated

metacognitive self-regulation to assess student use of

metacognitive regulation. It comprises of 12 items.

Cronbach’s α reported in this current sample is 0.83.

Likert response with five alternative answers were

given, ranging from strongly disagree (1), disagree

(2), hesitation (3), agree (4), and strongly agree (5).

Procrastination were assessed by Pure

Procrastination Scale (Steel, 2010). It has 12 items

and comprises three factors: decisional

procrastination, implemental delay, and

timeliness/lateness, as specified by recent refinement

scale (Svetina et al., 2017). In this present study,

Cronbach’s α were 0.92. Five Likert responses also

applied: strongly disagree (5), disagree (4), hesitation

(3), agree (2), and strongly agree (1).

2.3 Procedure

All of the questionnaires were performed through on

an online survey at the beginning of cognitive

psychology course. After researcher introduced

himself, all of the student attending the class were

asked their cooperation to fulfil the questionnaires.

They were informed that their responses would be

confidential.

2.4 Data Analysis

The correlation analysis was employed to seek out the

relationship between self-control, learning strategies,

and academic performance. A simple mediation

analysis also calculated to find the metacognitive self-

regulation mediation between procrastination and

GPA.

3 RESULT AND DISCUSSION

Descriptive analysis from Table 1 shows the means,

standard deviations, and categorization of

procrastination, metacognitive self-regulation, and

GPA. GPA mean reported relatively high (M=3.31).

There are 18.6% students has identified themselves as

a high and 16.1% very high procrastination. In

another word, 34.7% students having risk in

postponing academic task or assignments. On the

contrary, 44.7% students reported themselves having

no trouble in dealing with the academic deadline.

Table 2 shows the correlation analysis between

procrastination, metacognitive self-regulation, and

GPA. Procrastination correlated negatively and

ICLI 2018 - 2nd International Conference on Learning Innovation

significantly with metacognitive self-regulation (r = -

0.41, p < .001). That means the hypothesis 1 is

supported. Another result also confirms the

hypothesis 2, where metacognitive self-regulation

correlated positively and significantly with GPA (r =

0.18, p < .05). There is no correlation found between

procrastination and GPA (r = -0.10, p > .05).

Accordingly, path analysis could be applied to find

the mediating role of metacognitive self-regulation.

Table 1: Descriptive statistics of procrastination,

metacognitive self-regulation, and GPA.

Metacognitive

self-regulation

PPS

GPA

N 199 199 199

Mean 44.06 33.20 3.31

S.D 6.18 9.28 0.44

Very Low 14.6% 18.6% 19.1%

Low 26.6% 26.1% 21.1%

Moderate 24.6% 20.6% 21.1%

High 19.6% 18.6% 22.6%

Very high 14.6% 16.1% 16.1%

Table 2. Bivariate correlation between procrastination,

metacognitive self-regulation, and GPA.

GPA Procrasti

nation

Metaco

gnitive

_reg

GPA Spearman

’s rho

p-value -

Procrast

ination

Spearman

’s rho

-0.100 -

p-value 0.159 -

Metacog

nitive_r

Spearman

’s rho

0.179* -

0.401***

p-value 0.012 < .001 -

* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001

Table 3 shows the bootstrapping result, where

path (a) between procrastination and metacognitive

self-regulation is statistically significant (95% CI = -

0.359, -0.189, p = 0,000) as well as path (b) between

metacognitive self-regulation and GPA (95% CI =

0.006, 0.027, p = 0,002). These results suggest that

metacognitive self-regulation mediated the effect of

procrastination on GPA. Moreover, simple mediation

models were tested by using PROCESS v.3.0 in SPSS

(model 4). According to (Hayes, 2018), this

mediation analysis need no assumption such normal

theory approach. The result indicated that the indirect

effect of procrastination on GPA via metacognitive

self-regulation was significant and the association

was negative (Effect = −0.027; SE = 0.013; 95% CI

=−0.055,−0.006). The model supported the

mediation model, it was full mediation considering

both direct (Effect = −0.0004 SE = 0.004; 95% CI =

−0.007,−0.007) and total effect (Effect = −0.098; SE

= 0.002; 95% CI =−0.012,−0.001) were not

significant. Thus, hypothesis 3 was confirmed.

Table 3: Coefficient for the mediation analysis

Testing path

Unstandardized

coefficient

Bootstraping

Coefficient Std. error t sig LLCI ULCI

Procrastination–metacog self-reg (a) -0.274 0.043 -6.33 0.000 -0.359

0.189

Metacog self-reg – GPA (b) 0.017 0.005 3.127 0.002 0.006

0.0

Procrastination – metacog self-reg –

GPA (c’)

-0.0004 0.004 -0.121 0.904 -0.007

0.0

Procrastination – GPA (c) -0.005 0.003 -1.510 0.132 -0.012

0.0

Indirect effect -0.098 0.002

-0.009

0.001

The Mediating Role of Metacognitive Self-Regulation on Student Procrastination and Academic Performance

Figure 1: Path diagram for the mediation model of

procrastination on GPA via metacognitive self-regulation.

The present study was aimed to investigate the

link between procrastination, GPA, and

metacognitive self-regulation as well as the mediation

role of metacognitive self-regulation between

procrastination and GPA. Results indicate that

procrastination correlated significantly and

negatively with metacognitive self-regulation. Along

with that, metacognitive self-regulation has a positive

and significant association with GPA. Furthermore,

metacognitive self-regulation has fully mediated the

link between procrastination and GPA.

Consistent with the previous finding (Spada, Hiou

and Nikcevic, 2006; Park and Sperling, 2012; Fernie

et al., 2016), procrastination negatively associates

with metacognitive self-regulation. It is not surprising

that both variables are significantly correlated. A

student with high procrastination lack of action

despite the initial intention has settled, especially

when facing any distractions. This intention-action

gap could be minimized by controlling one’s own

cognitive process such as planning and monitoring.

Long-term goals can be broken down into the short

term in order to maintain willpower.

Finding also corroborates the idea of (Richardson,

Abraham and Bond, 2012) that metacognitive self-

regulation correlates with GPA. High use of

metacognitive self-regulation, associates with high

GPA. A student who regulates their learning

behaviour would take advantage of the learning

outcome. Since learning occurs intentionally, not

automatic, a student needs to plan and choose what

really want to do. Moreover, strategy use will be

required to master what they have learned. In

addition, by monitoring and evaluating learning result

considering the target, the student would have more

awareness about their performance.

Contrary to the previous study (Eerde, 2003;

Steel, 2007; Rabin, Fogel and Nutter-upham, 2011),

the finding indicates that procrastination doesn’t

correlate with GPA. A possible explanation for this

result is the academic performance preference that

chosen. Some studies (Kim and Seo, 2015; Morris

and Fritz, 2015) has investigated the link between

both variables which differ, depends on the

performance indicator chosen. GPA, assignment

grade, quiz score or course grade were reported

associated with procrastination, but not when

academic performance was measured by using mid-

term or final examination score. The highest

correlation emerged when academic performance was

indexed by using assignment grade. Specifically,

(Kim and Seo, 2015) also reported for the Asian

sample, the correlation between the two variables was

not robust. Further analysis indicates that the link

between procrastination and GPA could be explained

by the mediation of metacognitive self-regulation. By

optimizing the use of metacognitive self-regulation,

the student would be more aware of their thinking and

behaviour. It would decrease the delaying behaviour

and in turn, could enhance the academic performance.

Low procrastinate student would affect on high GPA

via metacognitive self-regulation.

Limitation of this study must be considered.

Because this research was only administrated to a

psychology student, a generalization of these result

should be taken cautiously. Therefore, for the further

recommendation, broaden sample from another

department would be more advantageous. Using

another academic performance indicator alongside

GPA such as assignment or final exam also

recommended.

4 CONCLUSIONS

This present study attempts to investigate the role of

metacognitive self-regulation in mediating between

procrastination and academic performance. Findings

has identified that metacognitive self-regulation

correlates with procrastination as well as academic

performance. Metacognitive self-regulation plays an

important role as a buffer between both variables. It

gives respond, regulate, and evaluate delaying

behaviour considering target of academic

performance. University stake holder should pay

attention to metacognitive skill of student. By

enhancing it, institution can get benefit from

preventing or reducing delaying behaviour and also

promote academic performance.

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