Procrastination in Upper School Female Students at a New York City Private School Before and During the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2019

Abstract

Procrastination can affect some people in negative ways (Tice 1997). Teenagers are vulnerable to the detrimental effects of procrastination as they learn to manage school-life balance (Reinecke 2018). The coronavirus pandemic led to virtual education and less extracurricular activities, inadvertently increasing teens’ unscheduled home time and possibly altering procrastination habits. There is little research about the pandemic’s effects on teenagers’ education habits and the extent to which teenagers’ procrastination habits have been affected. Teenagers’ procrastination levels would need to be determined before and during the pandemic. This study was conducted to help educators develop strategies to help teenagers manage school-life balance and decrease procrastination during the pandemic. This study reviewed the frequency of students’ procrastination levels before and during the COVID-19 outbreak based on the “percentage of time passed when assignments were submitted between time they were assigned at The Chapin School. 392 samples were collected and analyzed using the Chi-Square statistical test. The p-value of 0 was lower than the alpha of 0.01, with a confidence level of 99%. The alternative hypothesis that the level of procrastination in teenagers has decreased as a result of the coronavirus pandemic was accepted with 99% confidence. The collected data seemed to support the alternative hypothesis before analysis due to the differences in the frequency of the levels of procrastination before and during the pandemic. The results found in this study show educators that the new virtual platforms and schedules implemented during quarantine may have decreased the amount of procrastination in students.