Academic procrastination of medical students: The role of Internet addiction

Introduction: The internet is an essential and widely used toolfor college students; however, high internet dependency can havenegative consequences for students, especially regarding academiccareers. Such students may tend to postpone their academic tasks.Hence, the current study examines the effect of Internet addictionon academic procrastination among medical students.Methods: We applied a cross-sectional correlational researchdesign. 233 medical students of Shiraz University of MedicalSciences were selected through convenience sampling andparticipated in this study. To collect the data, we used two validand reliable questionnaires. The first was Young’s Internetaddiction questionnaire (IAT-20), which consists of 20 itemsbased on a 5-point Likert-type scale. The second was Solomonand Rothblum academic procrastination questionnaire, whichconsists of 18 items based on a 5 point Likert-type scale. We usedPearson correlation, independent T-test, and One-Way ANOVA toanalyze the data in SPSS version 22, and considered a significancelevel of P<0.05. Results: Results showed that 57.1% of the respondents werefemales, and the remaining were males. Findings indicated that8 (3.43%) of the participants were classified as severe internetaddicted,and 28.85% of them had a high level of academicprocrastination. The results indicated that there was a positive andsignificant correlation between Internet addiction and academicprocrastination (r=0.39, with P<0.01). Also, there was a positivecorrelation between academic procrastination dimensions (writinga term paper, studying for an exam, keeping up with weeklyreading assignments, performing administrative tasks, attendingmeetings and performing academic tasks in general) and Internetaddiction (r=0.22, r=0.32, r=0.21, r=0.29, r=0.33, and r=0.23,respectively, with P<0.01). Finally, the results revealed that malestudents and those living in the dormitory had a higher level ofInternet addiction and procrastination compared to female onesand those living at home (P<0.01).Conclusion: The findings of the current research reveal that aconsiderable number of students have levels of Internet addictionand procrastination; the study highlights that students with highlevels of Internet addiction are more likely to be at an increased riskof negative outcomes such as insufficiently controlled Internet use.