The Group-based Compassion-focused Intervention on Academic Procrastination, Anxiety, and Quality of Life of University Students: A Controlled Trial With 3-month Follow-up

Procrastination is one of the critical issues for university students and is associated with various psychological problems. This study examined the effectiveness of group compassion-focused intervention on procrastination, anxiety, and quality of life of (QoL) university students.

This research is an experimental study of clinical trial type. The study participants were 40 students of Iran University of Medical Sciences selected by a convenience sampling method. After obtaining informed consent, they completed the demographic questionnaire; academic procrastination questionnaire; depression, anxiety, and stress scale-21 (DASS-21); and personal wellbeing index–adult (PWI-A), before, immediately after, and three months after the intervention. The experimental group received eight 120-minute sessions of group compassion-focused therapy once a week, while the control group received no intervention. The data were compared using GLM repeated measures analysis of variance (GLMRM).

Regarding procrastination, there is no significant difference between the average preparation for assignments and the tendency to change people›s procrastination at different evaluation times. However, the interaction effect of time and group has a significance level smaller than 0.05, indicating a significant difference between the average preparation for the tasks of the experimental and control groups at different evaluation times (F=4.439, P=0.043). The effect size of 0.115 indicates a moderate effect. There is also a significant difference between the procrastination tendency of the experimental and control groups at different evaluation times (F=8.348, P=0.007). The effect size of 0.197 indicates a moderate effect. Also, there is a significant difference between the experimental and control groups› average anxiety (F=35.62, P=0.000) and quality of life (F=14.57, P=0.001) at different evaluation times. The size of the effect indicates its strength.

Group compassion-focused intervention can be used as an effective therapy in working with students. However, more studies are needed to examine and compare other variables with other evidence-based treatments.