Procrastination and Task Completion as Factors of Mathematics Anexiety Among Graduation Students

Abstract

The aim of this research was to identify the relationship between procrastination and anxiety specifically anxiety while performing tasks related to Mathematics. The hypotheses tested in this study were:(a) there would be a significant relationship between Mathematics anxiety and procrastination, and (b) students would be having a high level of procrastination on Mathematics task which are difficult boring, easy boring and difficult interesting as compared to task that are easy interesting. The rationale for the study lies on the fact, that for most graduate programs it is a prerequisite for students to enroll for arithmetic based subjects such as Accounting, Calculus, and Statistics. The nature of such pure subjects makes them difficult for a considerable number of graduate students. A sample of 50 graduate students both male and female was selected from Bahria University Karachi using purposive sampling. Mathematics Anxiety Test developed by Ellen Freedman (2001) was used as a pre-test screener to measure students’ Mathematics anxiety levels. The students were given two tasks to complete before the given due date and time. The students’ level of procrastination was measured, on the basis of total time measured in the number of hours and minutes that the students took to delay the commencement of the task. The results showed that the relationshipbetween the two variables was not significant. The second was rejected as well indicating no significant differences in the procrastination level for either of the two tasks.