The relations between academic procrastination and self-esteem in adolescents: A longitudinal study

Numerous cross-sectional studies have explored the correlations between self-esteem and academic procrastination, but the causal relation of these two crucial variables is still controversial, and their developmental relation over time is also unclear. We used cross-lagged and latent growth models to address these two relations. The results showed that (a) self-esteem was an antecedent of academic procrastination; (b) the self-esteem of the adolescent participants was declining while academic procrastination was gradually increasing; and (c) the initial level of self-esteem negatively predicted the initial level of academic procrastination and positively predicted the upward trend of academic procrastination, whereas the downward trend of self-esteem negatively predicted the upward trend of academic procrastination. These findings shed light on the longitudinal relation between self-esteem and academic procrastination, which could help researchers and educators intervene with adolescents’ academic procrastination from a developmental perspective.