Life Events And Academic Procrastination Among Middle School Students ——A Moderated Mediation Model

Academic procrastination is the specific manifestation of procrastination in the learning situation,which refers to the behavioral tendency of postponing learning tasks in a limited time range until the deadline approaches.Academic procrastination is quite common in schools.On the one hand,it will affect the completion of individual learning objectives,the acquisition of academic self-efficacy,hinder students to achieve greater academic achievements;On the other hand,it is also closely related to depression,anxiety and other negative emotions,seriously affecting students’ mental health.Previous studies have found that there is a positive correlation between academic stress and academic procrastination,which verifies the connection between stress and academic procrastination.However,academic stress is not the only thing middle school students face in real life.Whether other forms of stress encountered by individuals are also related to academic procrastination has not been tested yet.In addition,the cumulative stress hypothesis and the match-mismatch hypothesis suggest that in addition to the stress that occurs in the near future（proximal stress）,the stress that an individual is exposed to in the early stage（distal stress）still exerts an effect on the individual.Therefore,in order to explore the relationship between stress and academic procrastination in a more comprehensive way,the role of distal stress should also be taken into account.In conclusion,this study intends to construct a moderated mediation model to examine the relationship between proximal stress（life events）and academic procrastination,and to examine the moderating effect of state anxiety and distal stress（childhood maltreatment）.A total of 750 junior high school students were tested with Adolescent Self-rating Life Events Checklist,State-Trait Anxiety Inventory,Aitken Procrastination Inventory（middle school version）and Childhood Trauma Questionnaire.The results show that:（1）After controlling for grades,life events positively predicted academic procrastination;（2）State anxiety played a mediating role in the relationship between life events and academic procrastination;（3）The first half of the mediating effect of “life events→state anxiety→academic procrastination” was moderated by childhood maltreatment.To be specific,life events had a greater positive predictive effect on state anxiety in individuals with lower levels of childhood maltreatment than in individuals with higher levels of childhood maltreatment.By exploring the relationship between stress and academic procrastination,which is a more general meaning of life events,this study found that the positive relationship between stress and academic procrastination does not only exist in academic stress,but also in other forms of stress.In addition,this study also found that two types of stress（proximal stress and distal stress）are cumulative,and can affect academic procrastination through state anxiety.The results deepen and expand people’s understanding of the relationship between stress and academic procrastination,which is of great significance for the intervention of academic procrastination in middle school students.