A brief measure of academic procrastination in university students: development and validation of the Aitken...

Academic procrastination is a common self-regulatory difficulty in higher education, associated with poorer academic functioning and maladaptive motivational and emotional outcomes. Efficient assessment of academic procrastination is increasingly important in educational psychology research, where multiple learning-related constructs are often measured within limited questionnaire space. The present study aimed to develop and validate a brief version of the Aitken Procrastination Inventory (API) for use in university student populations. A total of 1,237 undergraduate students participated, and the sample was randomly split into development and validation subsamples. Ant Colony Optimization was used to identify candidate short forms in the development subsample. The retained short form was then evaluated in the validation subsample using confirmatory factor analysis, reliability analyses, and associations with fear of failure, psychological distress. Results supported a 4-item short-form API with a unidimensional structure (CFI = 0.99, TLI = 0.99, RMSEA = 0.01), good internal consistency (α = 0.84, ω = 0.85), and positive associations with fear of failure (r = 0.27), depression (r = 0.22), stress (r = 0.35), and anxiety (r = 0.28). This pattern is consistent with the conceptualization of procrastination as an avoidance-oriented self-regulatory difficulty. These findings support the construct validity of the short form and indicate that it provides a brief and psychometrically sound measure of academic procrastination in the university context.