The Effect of Internal Control on Academic Procrastination among Middle School Students: The Moderating Roles of Autonomous Motivation and Parental Pressure on Academic Performance

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether internal control, autonomous motivation of middle school students, and perceived parental pressure on academic performance affect academic procrastination, while verifying the moderating roles of autonomous motivation and parental pressure on academic performance. The participants were a total of 371 middle school students. Academic procrastination, internal control, autonomous motivation, and parental pressure on academic performance were measured using the Procrastination Inventory (Aitken, 1982) revised by Jeon and Park (2014), the Internal-External Control Scale (Ko, 2014), the Academic Self-Regulation Questionnaire (Ryan & Connell, 1989) revised by Kim (2002), and the Scale of Kang (2003), respectively. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS 26.0 and a Process Macro Model 2 (multiple additional modulation effect). The results of the study are summarized as follows. First, middle school students' internal control, autonomous motivation, and perceived parental pressure on academic performance directly affected the students’s academic procrastination. Second, the moderating role of parental pressure on academic performance was significant. On the other hand, the moderating role of autonomous motivation was not significant. In conclusion, the results of this study suggest that in order to reduce and prevent academic procrastination it is important to improve internal control by helping middle school students become confident enough to believe that they have the ability to change their behavior and achieve their aims. At the same time, parents need to be interested in the process rather than only the academic performance of their children and support their autonomy.