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- Choose Your Target User Group:
- Undergraduate university students
- This target group is relevant to our study goals because procrastination is especially prevalent among undergraduate students. There are several different kinds of tasks we can explore procrastination with, such as studying, completing assignments, completing work for extracurricular activities, and other tasks such as updating resumes or applying for financial aid. In addition, many undergraduate students are still figuring out strategies for managing tasks effectively after the shift from very structured high school environments. We also chose this group because our easy access to undergraduate university students makes it easier to test targeted interventions for procrastination.
- Create a Screener
- Design a Week-Long Diary Study:
- Decide on the type of data you want to collect:
- We are collecting both logistical and content data. The logistical data we are collecting includes the time and date at which the behavior occurred, since we are asking participants to log a brief summary of what they did each hour. We would be able to observe the frequency of different behaviors by parsing through their logs. The content data we are collecting includes the emotions participants experience while procrastinating and how they felt after completing the tasks. We also asked participants about their perspectives regarding their procrastination. This includes how they overcame procrastination throughout the day, different triggers for their procrastination, and any patterns in procrastination they have noticed while logging their data.
- Consider how to balance the amount of effort you are asking from participants with the depth of insight you want to gather.
- We are asking participants to log every hour. Each of these logs are meant to take a few seconds to record. Participants will log a brief summary of what they did during the past hour, such as “Worked on a problem set with my friend, walked to class and grabbed coffee from CoHo on the way ”. In the case that they did the same exact activity for multiple hours (such as if they are in class for 3 hours), they can log this as a range of hours (such as from 3-6pm: Attended CS123).
- At the end of the day, participants spend about 5 minutes submitting a reflection form with their data and answering some questions about their emotions and perspectives on their procrastination.
- Create a Data Collection Plan: Diary entries at the end of each day and hourly spreadsheet entries
- Create Study Materials: Develop the materials necessary for the diary study. These may include:
- Introduction Document: A document explaining the purpose of the study, how to participate, and expectations for the week.
- Discussion Guide: A guide for participants outlining the kind of entries you want them to make each day (same as our data collection plan).
- Intro and Closing Emails: An email to send to participants before the study starts, and one to thank them after the study concludes.
