Relationship of academic procrastination with metacognitive beliefs, emotion regulation and tolerance of ambiguity in university students

Procrastination is one of the effective factors in student's academic performance. This research carried out to investigate the relationship of academic procrastination with metacognitive beliefs, emotion regulation and tolerance of ambiguity. The research method was descriptive-correlational and its population was all students at the University of Isfahan, 120 of whom were selected by multistage simple random sampling method. The Sevari academic procrastination questionnaire (with dimensions of deliberating procrastination, procrastination caused by physical-mental and procrastination caused by disorganization), the Wells & Cartwright-Hatton metacognitive beliefs questionnaire, the Gratz & Roemer difficulties in emotion regulation scale and the Ahmadpour Mobarakeh tolerance of ambiguity scale were used for data gathering. Descriptive statistics including mean, and standard deviation and inferential statistics comprising Pearson correlation, simultaneous regression and independent t-test were used for data analysis. Results showed that there was a significant positive relationship between the total academic procrastination and procrastination caused by physical-mental (more procrastination) with metacognition beliefs (more negative metacognitive beliefs), emotion regulation (difficulty in emotion regulation) and tolerance of ambiguity (low tolerance of ambiguity). There was a significant positive relationship between the deliberating procrastination and procrastination caused by disorganization (more procrastination) with emotion regulation (difficulty in emotion regulation). The emotion regulation significantly predicted the total academic procrastination, procrastination caused by physical-mental and procrastination caused by disorganization. The tolerance of ambiguity significantly predicted the procrastination caused by physical-mental. Also, there is no difference between female students and male students in terms of procrastination, metacognition beliefs, emotion regulation and tolerance of ambiguity.