Effect of Academic Stress on Academic Procrastination and SelfRegulation among Professional Students

The pursuit of higher education is a time of transition marked by a set of unexpected sociocultural, environmental challenges with their increased academic loads. The fields of engineering, design/fine arts and medicine have become mainstream and every 5th student is taking one of these courses as their specialization in under graduation in India. With exceeding demands to excel in academics this age group is vulnerable to academic stress and may force to adopt maladaptive coping strategies/methods to deal with their daily academic demands. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between academic stress, academic procrastination and its impact on self-regulation pattern of the students as they progress from 1st year to 4th year. Perception of Academic Stress Scale (18 item scale), The Academic Procrastination Scale (25 item scale), and Self-regulation Questionnaire (63 item scale) was used. A total of 430 undergraduate students from 3 different fields of study - namely 141 Design/ Fine Arts Students i.e., 71 of 2nd year students and 70 of 4th year students, 140 of Engineering Students i.e., 70 of 2nd year students and 70 of 4th year students and 149 of Medical Students i.e., 79 of 2nd year students and 70 of 4th year students participated in this study. The statistical tests (Viz. Correlation, ANOVA and regression) have been used to analyse the data using SPSS 16.0. Using correlation analysis, results revealed that there was a significant relationship between academic stress, academic procrastination and selfregulation between the 2nd years and 4th years of design, medical and engineering students. By using ANOVA, it is found that there is a significant difference in the levels of self-regulation and its dimensions: receiving, searching, implementing, assessing, and dimensions of academic stress: academic expectations, faculty work and examinations, student’s academic self-perception in 4th year students based on the branch. There is a significant difference in the levels of faculty work and examination in the 2nd year based on the branch of academic stress, academic procrastination and self-regulation and subscales between 2nd and 4th years. Academic stress is negatively correlated with academic procrastination. Academic stress is positively correlated to self-regulation and academic procrastination is negatively correlated to self-regulation. In this study, the main predictors of “academic procrastination” are “academic stress” and “self-regulation.” The sample of the study reveals that there are different environmental demands which make significant changes in one's levels of academic stress, academic procrastination and self-regulation of these traditional and contemporary disciplines.