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Abstract
This study examined the relationship between academic self-efficacy beliefs, academic procrastination, and prior academic skills on course outcomes for students who completed a mandatory developmental college course. One hundred twenty three undergraduate students enrolled in a developmental college English course during a single semester participated. A very high academic self-efficacy was identified, even though students were enrolled in a developmental course. These students did not achieve higher grades suggesting an overestimation of academic achievement. A significant negative relationship existed between academic self-efficacy and academic procrastination. Students who had high academic procrastination levels also had lower academic-self-efficacy. Levels of academic procrastination yielded a statistically significant negative relationship to academic achievement. Students who had higher academic procrastination levels did not perform as well on end-of-course grades. Prior academic skills, predicted by the COMPASS Writing Skills Placement Test, produced a statistically significant relationship to academic achievement. Students with higher COMPASS scores achieved higher end-of-course grades. Older students and men had higher levels of academic procrastination. Students were most likely to procrastinate on studying for exams, weekly reading assignments, and completing writing assignments. Task aversiveness was the most important reason students gave for procrastinating. Younger students and men were more task averse. The fear of failure factor was not as important as task aversiveness as an explanation for academic procrastination. There was little difference between men and women on the fear of failure factor, which was different from the original study using the PASS (Solomon & Rothblum, 1984) in which women rated the fear of failure factor higher. Older students most often attributed fear of failure to academic procrastination.