The Correlation between Self-Handicapping and Students' Academic Performance: The Intermediary Role of Procrastination in High School Students in the City of Kermanshah

The present research has aimed to study the intermediary role of procrastination in the correlation between self-handicapping and students’ academic performance. The study took a descriptive correlational approach. The statistical population consisted of all senior high school students in the city of Kermanshah in the school year of 2018-2019, 373 of whom were selected as the sample based on Morgan’s sampling table and using random clustered sampling. The research tools consisted of the self-handicapping questionnaire devised by Jones and Rhodewalt (1982), Solomon and Rothblum’s procrastination questionnaire (1984), and the questionnaire devised by Pham and Taylor (1999) on academic performance. Simultaneous regression and structural equation modeling by means of SPSS and LISREL software were used for data analysis. The results pointed out the path coefficient between academic self-handicapping and procrastination to be 0.34, while for the correlation between academic self-handicapping and academic progress, it was determined to be -0.53, and the path coefficient for the effect of procrastination upon academic progress showed to be -0.41, indicating a significant correlation between the variables involved in the research. Moreover, the obtained results pointed out procrastination to have a -0.41 effect upon the correlation between self-handicapping and academic progress. In other words, adding the procrastination variable to the correlation between self-handicapping and academic progress pushes it up to -0.67. Thus, the intermediary role was verified. According to the obtained results, knowledge of self-handicapping and procrastination and how to avoid them is a matter of necessity and importance in order to help students and improve the educational system.