Procrastination and Self-Esteem Conclusion Chapter

Procrastination/Self-Esteem

Procrastination and Self-Esteem Research

The summary statistics resulting from the ANOVA analysis suggest that there is a definite correlation between procrastination levels and self-esteem in the population examined. Procrastination scores from the procrastination scale (Lay, 1986) covered a wide range of responses, however a mean score of about sixty with a standard deviation of just over twelve, meaning that the majority of the study population had a (self-assessed) procrastination level of over fifty percent and with a fair degree of concentration in the middle quartiles, as well. This grouping is somewhat significant in and of itself, demonstrating a fairly persistent emergence of some level of procrastination throughout the population studied, yet the spread in the procrastination level as reported by the subjects is still broad enough to reduce the level of certainty in the further analysis and the correlation the data appoints to.

A closer examination of preliminary descriptive shows that there are actually more subjects in the population below the mean established level of procrastination, however the group that is higher than this mean tends to skew slightly more extremely towards higher levels of procrastination. This skew in the data is again telling without any further interpretation, allowing certain very broad conclusions regarding procrastination in the population to be drawn, and in this instance could be seen as a potential boost to establishing the relationship tested here. High procrastinators tend to be significantly more prone to procrastination, and thus the effects of self-esteem (if such effects are established) would be magnified.

The homogeneity of the variances as measured by Levene's statistic appears to be significant, which supports the hypothesis that there is indeed a correlation between self-esteem and procrastination. If the variances of both variables as expressed throughout the population are significantly similar, as Levene's measure suggests they are, then it would support the conclusion that these two variables are correlated -- that one influences the other, or that both are influenced by a third (or more) factor. This cannot be taken as conclusive statistical evidence of a correlation between the two variables, of course, but if the pattern of distribution in the subjects' reported levels of self-esteem tracks the same skew noted in the distribution of subjects' reported levels of procrastination, it would seem quite likely that a strong correlation would be evidenced in other…