The Procrastination Research Group is composed of undergraduate and graduate psychology students at Carleton University working under the direction of Dr. Timothy A. Pychyl (with the collaboration of Dr. Joseph Ferrari).
The list below has been divided into three sections:
To contact these researchers click on their names below. (Note: E-mail addresses for past students may expire. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Please email Dr. Pychyl if you are unable to contact a specific researcher of interest.) Finally, in some cases, a copy of the student's work is provided. These have been converted from Word documents to html files (so they are quite simple in format). The copyright resides with the author, and you may not copy or otherwise reproduce any portion of these documents without written permission from the author.Allan completed his M.A. thesis in January of 1998 entitled, "Task aversiveness and procrastination: A multi-dimensional approach to task aversiveness across stages of personal projects." This manuscript was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. Allan has also published research relating boredom, state orientation and procrastination in Personality and Individual Differences (see Research Bibliography for complete reference). He is continuing his research on procrastination in the doctoral program.
Jianghe immigrated from China to Canada in the fall of 1999. She is completing her course work in the doctoral program. Her dissertation topic is yet to be determined.
Anita began her graduate studies during the spring term of 1999 with a annotated bibliography of the literature related to fear of failure. Anita plans to study the relationship between implementation intentions and procrastination further in her M.A. thesis.
TBA
Jane completed her honours thesis in the spring of 1996. She used pagers to sample students' activities over the course of three days. This experience-sampling technique allowed Jane to compare students' ratings on projects they thought they should be doing with what they really were doing (i.e., procrastinating). This study was replicated in 1997 by Jonathon Lee.
Brad studyied the effects of individual differences such as procrastination on group performance. Specifically, his thesis examined how group members perceive procrastinators in terms of tasks inputs and overall impact on a group. He also examined the effects of group levels of procrastination on overall group performance and group processes. Brad presented the results of this research at the EPA conference, Providence, RI in April of 1999.
Using a quasi-experimental design, Kelly followed three groups of undergraduates (one treatment and two comparison groups) over 8 weeks of an academic term. She used Personal Project Analysis and measures of Subjective Well Being to examine how intervention may affect chronic academic procrastinators. She presented her preliminary analyses of her data at the 1998 CACUSS conference and CPA 1999. She successfully defended her M.A. thesis in September, 2000.
Lisa completed her honours essay in the spring of 1998 with a review of the literature on lifespan development and its relationship to procrastination.
Jason Cassidy completed his honours thesis in the spring of 1998 with a study of the relationship between conscientiousness, state orientation and procrastination. Jason presented this work at the annual EPA conference in February of 1998.
Jose Castillo is a undergraduate student who studied the assessment of IQ on minority students through a review of the existing research literature. He completed his essay in the spring of 1999.
Atlas completed his honours essay in the spring of 1996, reviewing the literature on personality and procrastination.
Kim completed her honours thesis in the area of stress, coping, and procrastination in the spring of 1998. She graduated with highest honours winning a Senate Medal for Outstanding Achievement. She is now a graduate student at York University, Toronto.
Darlene completed her honours essay in the spring of 1997 on various factors which influence goal setting. Her research is based on work in Sports Psychology and Intentional Action. Darlene co-authored a paper with Dr. Pychyl on teaching with the World Wide Web. This paper will be published in the Teaching of Psychology in the winter of 1999.
Pam is an undergraduate honours student who examined the effects of one's goal state upon the degree or severity of procrastination. She employed a laddering technique, created by Dr. Brian Little and Neil Chambers, in order to acquire information concerning "how/why" subjects' pursue and attain various goals. Pam completed this thesis in the summe of 1999.
Greg completed his honours thesis during the 1999-2000 academic year. His work involved an investigation of the relationship between psychological hardiness and procrastination. Greg presented aspects of this work at both EPA (Baltimore) and CPA (Ottawa) 2000.
Jason is an undergraduate honours student who examined a type of procrastinator known as the "Defier." He reviewed current self-help literature on procrastination including a book titled It's About Time by Linda Sapadin, Ph.D, in which the Defier typology was introduced. He conducted a literature review to search for any empirical support for the typology, and to suggest possible areas for study. Jason completed this work in the late fall of 1998.
Michelle completed an independent study during the summer of 1997 summarizing the work relating personal projects (e.g., Lay, 1986) to procrastination. Michelle was an active participant in the Partnership Programs with Holy Trinity Catholic High School.
Jennifer is an undergraduate student who studyed the effects of procrastination on stress. Her study was based on a similar study done by Baumeister and Tice (1997) however it included an objective measure of stress. She examined stress levels of 10 procrastinators and 10 nonprocrastinators by measuring the level of free cortisol in their saliva. Jennifer completed this work in the spring of 1999.
Kathy is an undergraduate student who studied procrastination on the internet. Participants provided self reported measures of the internet use and the questionnaire also includes formal measures of procrastination. Kathy completed her thesis in the spring of 1999 (copy of her thesis).
Jonathon completed his honours research at Carleton examining the relationship between affect and procrastination. Using an experience-sampling technique, Jonathon paged students 5 times per day over a five-day period preceeding a test or essay due date. His findings challenge the research relating negative affect to procrastination. Jonathon presented the preliminary results of his research at the annual Undergraduate Thesis Conference, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, May 3, 1997; and the finished work at the EPA convention, February 27, 1998, Boston. This study was published in the special issue of the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality in the summer of 2000. Jonathon continued his work with the PRG as a Masters student with an exploration of the personal constructs of procrastinators. He completed this MA thesis in 1999. Jon's Picture
Carole is an undergraduate student who studyied existential aspects of procrastination. Using measures of both procrastination and certain existential concepts, she explored to what extent meaning and purpose in life relate to the tendency to delay or avoid goal pursuit. She completed her study by April, 1999.
Mitch completed his honours essay in April 1999. He reviewed the literature on self-regulation and examined its relationship to procrastination.
Steve completed his honours thesis in the spring of 1998 on the use of the Internet for course delivery or course support. Steve investigated how the instructor's "social presence" affected students' participation in course newsgroups (i.e., ListServs). He is revising his manuscript for publication (fall 1998)
Rick is an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces who completed his Honours B.A. in the spring of 1998. Rick graduated with the highest honours winning a Senate Medal for Outstanding Achievement. While working in the PRG, Rick served as the coordinator and developer of our web site. Rick completed his honours thesis relating the planning fallacy to procrastination (see Brian Salmon below) on December 19, 1997. This work has been submitted for publication.
Abby's summary of Intervention Strategies for Procrastination This link provides access to work completed as part of an independent study conducted by Abby Rabinowitz during the summer of 1997. Written for the layperson, this site provides an interesting overview of both popular and clinical intervention techniques.
Andrea joined our group in the summer of 1999 from Argentina. Her research and study in South America was focused on the treatment of anxiety and panic disorders. Andrea is now completing an M.Ed. in counseling psychology at the University of Ottawa.
During the fall of 1996, Brian collected data on the relation between the planning fallacy or unrealistic optimism and procrastination. In a review of the literature in this area, Brian found that people tend to underestimate the time they will require to do a project and overestimate how much they will be able to complete despite past experience to the contrary. Brian's research explores procrastination as an individual difference variable which may account for the variance observed in measures of the planning fallacy. It is with great regret that we continued Brian's research post humously. Brian died unexpectedly October 20, 1996. On May 29, 1997, Brian received an Individual Award of Excellence for his leadership in our high school partnership. On June 12, 1997, Brian graduated (post humously) with distinction. Brian's research was published in the Summer of 2000 in the special issue of the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality.
Arron Service completed a BSc. Hon. Psychology program at Carleton in the spring of 1998. His thesis explored prospective time estimation as it relates to procrastination. He is now revising this manuscript for publication
Dana is an undergraduate student who studyied the relationship between obsessive- compulsive disorder and decisional procrastination. Dana also completed an independent study in which she reviewed the work of Robert Boice. The independent study consists of a major paper that summarized the relationship between writer's block and procrastination. She completed both the independent study and thesis 1998-1999.
Dana also completed an independent study as one of her courses (Completed December 19, 1997). The independent study consists of the evolution of the psychological construct/word "lazy" through an annotated bibliography of psychological research in the 20th Century (selective sample). (Copy of her report).
Christine is completed her M.A. thesis research with an examination of multiple measures of procrastination. She conducted a factor analysis of the individual scales as well as all of the items across four scales with a sample of over 1,000 students to explore the factor structure of the current measures. She presented the results of this research at CPA 2000. Christine is also completing a Masters in Pastoral Counseling at St. Paul's University, Ottawa.
Andrew completed his honours research paper (1997) on the clinical and self-help literature written about procrastination. His purpose was to document the strategies and techniques used to help people deal with problem procrastination. Andrew graduated with a B.Ed. from the University of Windsor in the spring of 1998.
Rachelle completed her honours thesis in 1996 with a qualitative study of students' experience of procrastination. She conducted a grounded-theory analysis of interviews with students who self-identified as "problem procrastinators" and has proposed a project-analytic theory of procrastination.
Shelley completed an honours essay in the summer of 1999 examining the relationship between parenting style and aggression in children.
Lawrence studied procrastination and the internet. You can access his questionnaire here. This work is in progress, however Lawrence is now working in computer programming full time.
Haleh is from Iran. She completed her M.A. research with an investigation of the role of procrastination in a hierarchical model of achievement motivation. Dr. Pychyl presented aspects of this work in Belgium in the spring of 2000 and Haleh presented a poster of her research at CPA, 2000.
