Procrastination and working styles in high school students: does gender moderate this relationship?

Abstract

In this study were examined procrastination and working styles among 142 male and female high school students in Serbia. Specifically, the aim was to investigate the relationship between the tendency to procrastinate and working styles when gender was introduced as a moderator variable. Irrational Procrastination Questionnaire was used to assess procrastination, whereas working styles were measured by the Working styles Questionnaire. Conducted two-factorial MANOVA revealed that the relationship between procrastination behavior and a composite of work hard, hurry up, be strong, be perfect, and please others working styles was moderated by gender (i.e. procrastination x gender interaction was statistically significant). In addition, univariate analysis (two-way ANOVA) revealed that only the relationship between procrastination and working style hurry up was moderated by gender. Simple effects analysis indicated that this working style was almost equally expressed between male students with a low and high propensity to procrastinate their obligations, while female students with a highly expressed tendency to procrastination showed evidently stronger preference to work under the time pressure and to delay work until it becomes urgent in comparison to female students who tend to procrastinate less.