Hi, Jonathan,
Say 'hi' to Tim Pychyl for me ... I'm guessing that he's your supervisor
(or intended supervisor) but correct me if I'm wrong ;)
>Most people believe that procrastination
>is a deficiency in time management but research in this area has shown
>procrastination to be related to depression, low self-esteem,
>self-handicapping tendencies, low self-efficacy, anxiety, perfectionism
>and many more. Missing from this research is how procrastinators construe
>their academic tasks and I hoping that my research will bridge this gap.
Have you looked at Linda Cameron's thesis yet? She took a Personal Projects
Analysis (PPA) approach and compared the constructs that Dr. Little provides
to those that are spontaneously generated by people, and found that many
are highly mappable. While she didn't work with procrastinators,
per se, her approach was unique in that it took Personal Action Construct
research back to its Kellian roots, and explored truly *personal* constructs.
That's a good starting point, although you may want to take the PPA approach
of providing some of the constructs to establish between-subject
comparability.
Don't limit yourself to the standard ones...you could include a "how
depressing
is it (or would it be) to work on this project?" scale or other things that
operationalize the constructs suggested by the literature.
Good luck,
Travis.
Travis Gee
Lecturer, School of Psychology
University of New England
Armidale NSW 2351
Australia
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