Academic procrastination which is widely seen in education is defined as delaying or postponing tasks even one is are aware of its risks (Steel, 2007). Previous studies showed that several factors may affect academic procrastination like lower self-efficacy, lower self-esteem, fear of failure, negative attitudes, and etc. (Ferrari, 1994;Tuckman, 1991; Uzun Özer, Demir, & Ferrari, 2009). Therefore, scholars paid attention to this topic by conducting studies to understand the dynamics of it in order to handle with its negative effects. Among these studies, mostly are focused on high school or college aspects (Ocak & Bulut, 2015; Uzun Özer, Saçkes, & Tuckman, 2013). However, academic procrastination is also a widely common problem in graduate education. Although graduate students share some similar reasons for this behavior in baseline, there might be different reasons for them since they are struggling with different life issues such as marriage, having a child, working in a full time job at the same time with their master or PhD educations. However, even individuals highly motivated to attend a graduate program, procrastination behaviors among graduate students are seen in the process (Kahn, 2011). Even, academic procrastination in graduate level sometimes can be resulted with course withdrawals or drop outs from the program which costs too much effort not only for individual but also for the governments in terms of human resources, time, financial issues and, etc. Therefore, this study aimed to focus on the underlying factors affecting academic procrastination among graduate students in Turkey since it is sparse in Turkish literature.  Another aim of studying academic procrastination among graduate students is to develop a scale filling the gap both in Turkey and European context. Specifically, contributing scale development in general, generating items in particular is aimed by researchers with this study. 

This study is designed as a qualitative study. The participants will be consisted of at least fifty graduate students who are enrolled in master or PhD programs in the field of education. In order to examine factors affecting academic procrastination among graduate students, open-ended questions will be used and semi-structured interviews will be carried with selected students. The open-ended questions will be developed by the researchers in several steps. First, the researchers will develop questions and then, expert opinion step will take place to see the appropriateness of the questions for the study aim. After revising the questions considering the feedbacks of the experts, a pilot study will be conducted with five students. Following this, the revisions will be made and the main data will be collected. All data will be analyzed with qualitative methods by the researchers.

The study is ongoing. After data collection process, data will be analyzed and discussed in the context of education. Besides, findings of the present study will be used as first step of the scale development in the future by the researchers.

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