Shedding light on the causes of academic procrastination among nursing students: A qualitative descriptive study

BACKGROUND: Academic procrastination is a complex phenomenon and a common behavior among nursing students. Due to procrastinating behaviors, students cannot show their real performances in learning processes. In order to stop this behavior, it is crucial to know the most common causes of procrastination in the first place. The aim of this study was to identify a variety of different possible factors influencing academic procrastination among nursing students. MATERIALS AND METHOD: A qualitative study method with the content analysis approach was conducted from October 2019 to March 2020. Participants were 67 nursing students and 8 nursing educators from 3 nursing schools in Iran. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were used for data gathering. An inductive approach to content analysis was used for data analysis. RESULTS: Five categories and 24 subcategories emerged from the data analysis: “student-related factors,” “educator-related factor,” “assignment characteristic-related factors,” “institution-related factors,” and “nursing work-related factors.” CONCLUSIONS: The present study showed that nursing students’ academic procrastination can have a wide range of causes and a comprehensive effort is needed to address the problems. The result of our study will be useful to nursing students, educators, and nursing administrators in relation to what constitutes nursing students’ academic procrastination, as well as how nursing education can play an effective role in decreasing tendency to procrastination.