Treatment of Academic Procrastination in College Students

Abstract

The purpose of the next two Chapters is to present suggested clinical guidelines regarding interventions for the treatment of decisional and task procrastination. Unfortunately, only a very small literature exists that includes outcome data regarding the treatment of procrastination. Many of these studies remain unpublished, existing either in dissertations or in other sources (e.g., manuscripts that have not been peer reviewed, requests for funding, and internal evaluation data). The reason for this is because procrastination-treatment programs are usually not designed for research purposes. Data, if collected at all, is obtained for program evaluation or other internal needs. There is an absence of double-blind attention-placebo trials, which are usually considered necessary to establish demonstrated efficacy of a treatment. Because of the lack of comprehensive outcome studies, many of our treatment recommendations rely on clinical experience. Other interventions draw on our unpublished work, which spans the past several years. We admit that at times our methodology is less satisfactory than we would like. Our hope is that these clinically derived interventions can eventually be subjected to empirical testing.