The Effects of Group Problem-Solving Training on Academic Help-Seeking and Academic Buoyancy in Procrastinating Female Students

Academic achievement and its associated factors have always been considered by researchers in the field of education. Evidence indicated that the undeniable increase in academic failure and students’ procrastination, as well as its adverse consequences on their success, are of great importance. Procrastination is described as a lack of self–regulation and a tendency to delay what is necessary to achieve a goal. By increasing stress and negative consequences in students' academic life, procrastination, as a barrier to academic success reduces the quantity and quality of learning. Academic help–seeking and academic buoyancy significantly influence resolving academic challenges and play an essential role in students' academic achievement. The present study aimed to determine the effects of group problem–solving training on academic help–seeking and academic buoyancy in procrastinating female students.

This was a quasi–experimental study with pretest–posttest and a control group design. The statistical population of the study included all tenth–grade procrastinating female students in Urmia City, Iran, in the academic year of 2019–2020 (N=546). By implementing the Academic Procrastination Questionnaire (Solomon & Rathblum, 1984), academic procrastination was diagnosed in 147 subjects. Of them, 30 qualified volunteers with scores less than the cut–off point of 42 in the Academic Help–Seeking Scale (Ryan & Pintrich, 1997) and less than the cut–off point of 36 in the Academic Buoyancy Questionnaire (Dehghanizadeh & Hossein Chari, 2012) entered the study. Accordingly, the study participants were randomly divided into the experimental and control groups (n=15/group). Both study groups completed the Academic Buoyancy Questionnaire (Dehghanizadeh & Hossein Chari, 2012) and the Academic Help–Seeking Scale (Ryan & Pintrich, 1997). The experimental group underwent ten 60–minute sessions of group problem–solving training intervention (Dezorilla & Goldfried, 1971). To analyze the collected data, in the descriptive part, mean and standard deviation, and in the inferential part, Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) were used in SPSS. The significance level of the tests was set at 0.05.

The ANCOVA results revealed that group problem–solving training increased academic buoyancy’s posttest scores in the experimental group (p=0.045). The effect size of the academic buoyancy score was calculated as 0.146. Therefore, the presented group problem–solving training effectively improved academic buoyancy scores among the examined procrastinating students. Furthermore, this training increased the posttest scores of academic help–seeking in the experimental group (p=0.006). The effect size of the academic help–seeking score was measured to be 0.258. Therefore, group problem–solving training was effective in increasing academic help–seeking scores in the explored procrastinating students.

According to the research findings, group problem–solving skills training promoted academic help–seeking and academic buoyancy among procrastinative students. Teachers can use this educational strategy to teach lessons to learners.