Academic procrastination mediates the relation between conscientiousness and academic achievement

Academic procrastination is prevalent among university students and substantially correlated with conscientiousness and academic achievement. An open question is related to the mechanism by which conscientiousness influences academic achievement, with academic procrastination acting as potential mediator of the conscientiousness-achievement relation. Therefore, we investigated N = 109 university students in the context of one course with an obligatory end-of-semester examination. Specifically, we assessed conscientiousness at the beginning of the semester, academic procrastination near the end of the semester, and academic achievement in the end-of-semester examination. As expected, procrastination correlated with conscientiousness (r = –.67) and achievement (r = −.29), and conscientiousness correlated with achievement (r = .22). Furthermore, mediation analyses showed not only direct effects from conscientiousness to procrastination and from procrastination to achievement, but also an indirect effect with procrastination mediating the effect from conscientiousness to achievement. The psychological and educational relevance of the results is discussed.