Reciprocal associations among fear of failure, academic buoyancy, and academic procrastination in primary school students: a three-wave cross-lagged panel study

Academic procrastination is common in late elementary school and is associated with lower academic achievement and poorer well-being. Drawing on achievement motivation theory, the Study Demands-Resources (SD-R) framework, academic buoyancy theory, and Conservation of Resources theory, this three-wave longitudinal study examined reciprocal associations among fear of failure, academic buoyancy, and academic procrastination in Grade 5-6 students (N = 542). Participants completed self-report measures of fear of failure, academic buoyancy, and academic procrastination at three time points across one academic year, with approximately 3 months between adjacent waves. Covariate-adjusted cross-lagged panel models were estimated to examine reciprocal prospective associations among the three constructs. In the covariate-adjusted traditional CLPM, fear of failure and academic buoyancy prospectively predicted each other in negative directions, and academic buoyancy and academic procrastination also showed negative reciprocal prospective associations. Fear of failure predicted later procrastination from T1 to T2, whereas the direct T2-to-T3 path was not significant. Academic buoyancy showed significant longitudinal indirect associations linking fear of failure with later procrastination and procrastination with later fear of failure. A supplementary RI-CLPM indicated that the within-person cross-lagged effects were not uniform across intervals and that the within-person indirect effects were not statistically significant. These findings suggest that academic buoyancy may function as a modifiable adaptive coping capacity that helps students cope with fear of failure and is associated with lower subsequent academic procrastination during the transition from late primary school to middle school.