The Mediating Role of Metacognitive Self-Regulation on Student
Procrastination and Academic Performance
Hariz Enggar Wijaya
Department of Psychology, Islamic University of Indonesia, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Keywords: Metacognitive Self-Regulation, Procrastination, Academic Performance.
Abstract: The current study intends to investigate the link between procrastination, academic performance, and
metacognitive self-regulation, as well as the mediation role of metacognitive self-regulation between
procrastination and academic performance. There were 199 undergraduate students of psychology
participated in this study. They were administered metacognitive self-regulation scale, pure procrastination
scale, and also reported their recent Grade Point Average (GPA). Results indicate that procrastination
correlated significantly and negatively with metacognitive self-regulation. In line with that, metacognitive
self-regulation has a positive and significant association with GPA. Furthermore, metacognitive self-
regulation fully mediated the link between procrastination and GPA.
1 INTRODUCTION
Having a good standard to meet academic attaining is
demanding for the student. But in fact, many students
reported had a problem dealing with an academic
deadline. Postponing to start or complete assignment
being an issue in this context, it is procrastination.
(Özer, Demir and Ferrari, 2009) have investigated
among 784 undergraduate students in Turkey, 52% of
them describe themselves as procrastinators. The
three most problematic assignment according to the
student is studying for an examination, writing term
papers, and reading assignments.
Procrastination seems to occur not only in the
certain culture but across the nation and culture.
(Ferrari, O’Callaghan and Newbegin, 2005) have
reported from United States, United Kingdom, and
Australia samples, that 11% of the participants
labelled themselves as chronic arousal procrastinators
and 9.9% as chronic avoidant procrastinators. In
accordance with that, (Ferrari et al., 2007) also
highlighted this prevalence which takes place across
the six nations: Spain, Peru, Venezuela, the United
Kingdom, Australia, and the United States.
In the Indonesian context, based on (Adrianta and
Tjundjing, 2007) survey, from 316 samples of
undergraduate students in Surabaya, Indonesia, there
are 30.9% students reported having high
procrastination. In line with that, (Ursia, Siaputra and
Sutanto, 2013) also underlined high academic
procrastination, for about 56.7% on undergraduate
student. Recently, high procrastination of
undergraduate student has reported of 36% (Wijaya
and Tori, 2018). Three academic demands reported as
highly perceived as a problem are writing papers,
weekly reading assignments, and studying for exams.
Procrastination referred to as a “voluntary delay
of an intended action despite the recognition that this
delay may have a negative effect” (Sirois and Pychyl,
2016). The main problem of procrastination is not the
absence of intention, but the consequence to acting as
it was initiated at the beginning, namely intention-
action gap (Steel et al., 2018). High procrastinate
student does have the intention to finish any task or
assignment, they make any planning, but in the end,
they fail to meet the deadline or standard. As a
consequence, the student feels more stress (Sirois,
2013), anxiety, depressed, less life satisfaction
(Beutel et al., 2016), and less well-being (Krause and
Freund, 2014). Furthermore, it has a detrimental
effect on academic performance (Steel, 2007; Klassen
et al., 2010).
Numerous studies have linked procrastination
with metacognitive self-regulation (Park and
Sperling, 2012; de Palo et al., 2017; Ziegler and
Opdenakker, 2018). This association could be
described by the lens of self-regulation theory, where
procrastination seen as a self-regulation failure
(Wolters, 2003; Park and Sperling, 2012). The term
Wijaya, H.
The Mediating Role of Metacognitive Self-Regulation on Student Procrastination and Academic Performance.
DOI: 10.5220/0008407700570062
In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Learning Innovation (ICLI 2018), pages 57-62
ISBN: 978-989-758-391-9
Copyright
c
 2019 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
57

metacognition can be defined as thinking about our
own mind, which places our own cognition as a
central object of thinking (Veenman, 2015). When
student employs metacognition, it is not only
activated how to acquire and to use an information,
but also metacognitive skill such as goal setting,
planning, monitoring, and evaluation. By controlling
one’s own cognition, it can minimize procrastinate
behaviour.
Metacognitive self-regulation is closely related to
academic performance as well as procrastination.
(Richardson, Abraham and Bond, 2012) have
denounced that metacognition correlates positively
and significantly on academic performance. Similar
to that finding, (Dent and Koenka, 2016) have
underlined the relationship between those variables.
High metacognitive self-regulation associated with
high academic performance, though it differs depends
on the academic performance indicator that has
chosen. Metacognitive self-regulation correlates with
standardizing achievement test, average grade across
a course, and assignment, but not GPA.
Based on the previous background, this present
study would address three hypotheses. First,
procrastination will be negatively related to
metacognitive self-regulation. Secondly,
metacognitive self-regulation will be positively
associated with GPA. Thirdly, metacognitive self-
regulation will be mediating the relationship between
procrastination and GPA.
2 METHOD
2.1 Participant
There were 199 undergraduate students participated
in this study. They were from the psychology
department of the Islamic University of Indonesia, 44
males (20%) and 155 females (80%). All participants
were from the cognitive psychology course of a
private university in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
2.2 Instruments
This present study administrated two questioners to
collect the data. There are metacognitive self-
regulation scale and pure procrastination scale.
Participants reported themselves their recent Grade
Point Average (GPA) by filling the questioners. It
ranging from 0 to 4 point index.
The metacognitive self-regulation subscale is a
self-report scale, part of Motivated Strategies for
Learning Questionnaires (MSLQ), which developed
by (Pintrich et al., 1993). It has 15 subscales and can
be administrated separately (Duncan and Mckeachie,
2005). For this current study, we administrated
metacognitive self-regulation to assess student use of
metacognitive regulation. It comprises of 12 items.
Cronbach’s α reported in this current sample is 0.83.
Likert response with five alternative answers were
given, ranging from strongly disagree (1), disagree
(2), hesitation (3), agree (4), and strongly agree (5).
Procrastination were assessed by Pure
Procrastination Scale (Steel, 2010). It has 12 items
and comprises three factors: decisional
procrastination, implemental delay, and
timeliness/lateness, as specified by recent refinement
scale (Svetina et al., 2017). In this present study,
Cronbach’s α were 0.92. Five Likert responses also
applied: strongly disagree (5), disagree (4), hesitation
(3), agree (2), and strongly agree (1).
2.3 Procedure
All of the questionnaires were performed through on
an online survey at the beginning of cognitive
psychology course. After researcher introduced
himself, all of the student attending the class were
asked their cooperation to fulfil the questionnaires.
They were informed that their responses would be
confidential.
2.4 Data Analysis
The correlation analysis was employed to seek out the
relationship between self-control, learning strategies,
and academic performance. A simple mediation
analysis also calculated to find the metacognitive self-
regulation mediation between procrastination and
GPA.
3 RESULT AND DISCUSSION
Descriptive analysis from Table 1 shows the means,
standard deviations, and categorization of
procrastination, metacognitive self-regulation, and
GPA. GPA mean reported relatively high (M=3.31).
There are 18.6% students has identified themselves as
a high and 16.1% very high procrastination. In
another word, 34.7% students having risk in
postponing academic task or assignments. On the
contrary, 44.7% students reported themselves having
no trouble in dealing with the academic deadline.
Table 2 shows the correlation analysis between
procrastination, metacognitive self-regulation, and
GPA. Procrastination correlated negatively and
ICLI 2018 - 2nd International Conference on Learning Innovation
58

significantly with metacognitive self-regulation (r = -
0.41, p < .001). That means the hypothesis 1 is
supported. Another result also confirms the
hypothesis 2, where metacognitive self-regulation
correlated positively and significantly with GPA (r =
0.18, p < .05). There is no correlation found between
procrastination and GPA (r = -0.10, p > .05).
Accordingly, path analysis could be applied to find
the mediating role of metacognitive self-regulation.
Table 1: Descriptive statistics of procrastination,
metacognitive self-regulation, and GPA.
Metacognitive
self-regulation
PPS
GPA
N 199 199 199
Mean 44.06 33.20 3.31
S.D 6.18 9.28 0.44
Very Low 14.6% 18.6% 19.1%
Low 26.6% 26.1% 21.1%
Moderate 24.6% 20.6% 21.1%
High 19.6% 18.6% 22.6%
Very high 14.6% 16.1% 16.1%
Table 2. Bivariate correlation between procrastination,
metacognitive self-regulation, and GPA.
GPA Procrasti
nation
Metaco
gnitive
_reg
GPA Spearman
’s rho
-
p-value -
Procrast
ination
Spearman
’s rho
-0.100 -
p-value 0.159 -
Metacog
nitive_r
eg
Spearman
’s rho
0.179* -
0.401***
-
p-value 0.012 < .001 -
* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
Table 3 shows the bootstrapping result, where
path (a) between procrastination and metacognitive
self-regulation is statistically significant (95% CI = -
0.359, -0.189, p = 0,000) as well as path (b) between
metacognitive self-regulation and GPA (95% CI =
0.006, 0.027, p = 0,002). These results suggest that
metacognitive self-regulation mediated the effect of
procrastination on GPA. Moreover, simple mediation
models were tested by using PROCESS v.3.0 in SPSS
(model 4). According to (Hayes, 2018), this
mediation analysis need no assumption such normal
theory approach. The result indicated that the indirect
effect of procrastination on GPA via metacognitive
self-regulation was significant and the association
was negative (Effect = −0.027; SE = 0.013; 95% CI
=−0.055,−0.006). The model supported the
mediation model, it was full mediation considering
both direct (Effect = −0.0004 SE = 0.004; 95% CI =
−0.007,−0.007) and total effect (Effect = −0.098; SE
= 0.002; 95% CI =−0.012,−0.001) were not
significant. Thus, hypothesis 3 was confirmed.
Table 3: Coefficient for the mediation analysis
Testing path
Unstandardized
coefficient
Bootstraping
Coefficient Std. error t sig LLCI ULCI
Procrastination–metacog self-reg (a) -0.274 0.043 -6.33 0.000 -0.359
-
0.189
Metacog self-reg – GPA (b) 0.017 0.005 3.127 0.002 0.006
0.0
27
Procrastination – metacog self-reg –
GPA (c’)
-0.0004 0.004 -0.121 0.904 -0.007
0.0
07
Procrastination – GPA (c) -0.005 0.003 -1.510 0.132 -0.012
0.0
01
Indirect effect -0.098 0.002 -0.009
-
0.001
The Mediating Role of Metacognitive Self-Regulation on Student Procrastination and Academic Performance
59

Figure 1: Path diagram for the mediation model of
procrastination on GPA via metacognitive self-regulation.
The present study was aimed to investigate the
link between procrastination, GPA, and
metacognitive self-regulation as well as the mediation
role of metacognitive self-regulation between
procrastination and GPA. Results indicate that
procrastination correlated significantly and
negatively with metacognitive self-regulation. Along
with that, metacognitive self-regulation has a positive
and significant association with GPA. Furthermore,
metacognitive self-regulation has fully mediated the
link between procrastination and GPA.
Consistent with the previous finding (Spada, Hiou
and Nikcevic, 2006; Park and Sperling, 2012; Fernie
et al., 2016), procrastination negatively associates
with metacognitive self-regulation. It is not surprising
that both variables are significantly correlated. A
student with high procrastination lack of action
despite the initial intention has settled, especially
when facing any distractions. This intention-action
gap could be minimized by controlling one’s own
cognitive process such as planning and monitoring.
Long-term goals can be broken down into the short
term in order to maintain willpower.
Finding also corroborates the idea of (Richardson,
Abraham and Bond, 2012) that metacognitive self-
regulation correlates with GPA. High use of
metacognitive self-regulation, associates with high
GPA. A student who regulates their learning
behaviour would take advantage of the learning
outcome. Since learning occurs intentionally, not
automatic, a student needs to plan and choose what
really want to do. Moreover, strategy use will be
required to master what they have learned. In
addition, by monitoring and evaluating learning result
considering the target, the student would have more
awareness about their performance.
Contrary to the previous study (Eerde, 2003;
Steel, 2007; Rabin, Fogel and Nutter-upham, 2011),
the finding indicates that procrastination doesn’t
correlate with GPA. A possible explanation for this
result is the academic performance preference that
chosen. Some studies (Kim and Seo, 2015; Morris
and Fritz, 2015) has investigated the link between
both variables which differ, depends on the
performance indicator chosen. GPA, assignment
grade, quiz score or course grade were reported
associated with procrastination, but not when
academic performance was measured by using mid-
term or final examination score. The highest
correlation emerged when academic performance was
indexed by using assignment grade. Specifically,
(Kim and Seo, 2015) also reported for the Asian
sample, the correlation between the two variables was
not robust. Further analysis indicates that the link
between procrastination and GPA could be explained
by the mediation of metacognitive self-regulation. By
optimizing the use of metacognitive self-regulation,
the student would be more aware of their thinking and
behaviour. It would decrease the delaying behaviour
and in turn, could enhance the academic performance.
Low procrastinate student would affect on high GPA
via metacognitive self-regulation.
Limitation of this study must be considered.
Because this research was only administrated to a
psychology student, a generalization of these result
should be taken cautiously. Therefore, for the further
recommendation, broaden sample from another
department would be more advantageous. Using
another academic performance indicator alongside
GPA such as assignment or final exam also
recommended.
4 CONCLUSIONS
This present study attempts to investigate the role of
metacognitive self-regulation in mediating between
procrastination and academic performance. Findings
has identified that metacognitive self-regulation
correlates with procrastination as well as academic
performance. Metacognitive self-regulation plays an
important role as a buffer between both variables. It
gives respond, regulate, and evaluate delaying
behaviour considering target of academic
performance. University stake holder should pay
attention to metacognitive skill of student. By
enhancing it, institution can get benefit from
preventing or reducing delaying behaviour and also
promote academic performance.
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