Procrastination in Different Life-Domains: Is Procrastination Domain Specific?

Procrastination, putting off until tomorrow what one had intended to do today, is a well-known phenomenon in everyday life. In an attempt to understand the character of procrastination, a large body of research has been accumulating over the last 40 years. The present study was to evaluate the need to distinguish between procrastination in different life-domains by gathering first hints as to whether procrastination is domain specific or domain general. In an online survey on 260 students (mean age = 23.56; SD = 3.74) the procrastination frequency in 6 different life-domains (academic and work, everyday routines and obligations, health, leisure, family and partnership, social contacts) was examined. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and the analysis of mean-level differences revealed that procrastination is domain specific, but not extremely so. The results encourage further investigations into the domain specificity of procrastination and suggest that future diagnoses of and interventions for procrastination will profit from considering the life-domain procrastination occurs in.