What Influences Implementation Intentions in an Academic Learning Context – The roles of Goal Intentions, Procrastination, and Experience

Abstract

Studies show that many students struggle with properly organizing their academic activities; what makes things even worse is that up to 90% of students are at least part-time procrastinators. In order to clarify how these students could be supported, the article at hand deals with the influences and possible benefits of implementation intentions in an academic learning context and substantiates the literature discussion with data collected among students. Aiming at studying the antecedents of academic performance from a cognitive perspective, the research complements an extended form of the Theory of Planned Behaviour by integrating procrastination and experience. Unlike many other studies, this paper does not focus on reasons for nor different forms of procrastination, but rather develops a comprehensive framework for understanding academic learning. A structural equation modelling approach is applied for this purpose using an empirical data base. For the outcome of this research different hypotheses are investigated especially in reference to implementation intentions. In the majority of cases the theories presented during the literature review can be substantiated with the empirical data used for the study. Key findings are the significant influences of goal intentions, as well as experience, and their positive effect on implementation intentions. Furthermore, the negative influence of procrastination is underlined by the results of the paper and identified as a major problem for college students. Other findings of the paper are the effects of subjective norms and PBC (Perceived Behaviour Control) on the formation of goal intentions. Nevertheless, the study brings up several further questions and identifies areas where research should be deepened, that is behaviour itself.