School administrators' procrastination behaviours, workloads and personality traits

The purpose of this research is to determine the school administrators? perceptions about their procrastination behavior, workload, and personality traits. The subsequent purposes of the study are to determine whether school administrators? perceptions differ in terms of gender, subject, duty, seniority, school type, and educational background, and to examine the relation between procrastination behavior, workload, and personality traits.The data for this research were collected using both qualitative and quantitative research techniques. For the quantitative part of the research, ?survey? model was used. For the qualitative part, the design of case study was used. In order to ensure that the instruments of the research are responded accurately, thus increasing the reliability and validity of the research, pilot and actual studies were conducted on two distinct principal populations. The population of the pilot study comprised a total of 127 school administrators (34 principals and 93 vice principals) working in the primary and high schools located in the central district of Bingöl province during 2008?2009 education year. Given that whole population was accessible, all of the school administrators were covered without selecting sample out of it. After incomplete and faulty questionnaires were discarded, a total of 121 forms were considered for inclusion in validity and reliability studies. The second population, which is the actual subject group of research, was consist of 368 school administrators (110 principals and 258 vice principals) working in the primary and high schools located in central district of Malatya province 2008?2009 education year. The sample of the research consisted 270 school administrators (77 principals and193 vice-principals) who volunteered to participate into the study.The quantitative data of the research were collected through three different scales. ?Procrastination Scale for School Administrators?, developed by the researcher, was used in order to determine the procrastination behavior of the administrators. ?Role-Oriented Workload Scale?, which was originally developed by Reilly (1982) and Turkish validity and reliability studies of which were done by the researcher was used to measure the administrators? perceptions of workload. Moreover, ?Big Five Factor Personality Scale?, validity and reliability studies of which were done by Tomrukçu (2008), was used to determine the personality traits of the school administrators. The qualitative data were gathered through interviews with school administrators and teachers in order to obtain detailed information about the procrastination behaviors and workloads of school administrators. A semi-structured administrator (Annex-6) and teacher (Annex-7) forms were used during interviews which included questions prepared based on literature review, expert views and scale items used in the quantitative part of the research.Prior to the analysis of the quantitative data, Levene?s test for homogeneity of variances was used to test the homogeneity of the variances. Where variances were homogeneous, t-test was used to test the differences between participants? perceptions in terms of gender, subject, and duty variables, whereas One-way Anova test was used for comparisons between groups in terms of seniority, school type, and educational background. In order to determine the association between administrators procrastination behaviors and their workload and personality traits, Pearson Correlation analysis was used. Where variances were not homogeneous, t-test was replaced by Mann Whithney-U, and One-way Anova test was replaced by Kruskall Wallis-H Test. SPSS 14.0 (Statistical Package for The Social Sciences) software was used in statistical analyses of the data obtained through research instruments. In the analysis of the qualitative data, the content of the interviews were first deciphered by listening to the records from the cassettes, and they were exposed to content analysis by putting the similar concepts together. During the analyses, participants were quoted by using their own statements by referring to administrators with codes from 1A to 12A, and to teachers with given numbers from 1T to 18T.Based on the findings of the research, it was concluded that administrators display procrastination behaviors partially, they perceive their workload at moderate level, they ?generally? agree with the conscientiousness subscale of the personality scale, moderately agree with the ?agreeableness? subscale, and generally agree with the neuroticism subscale. Based on the qualitative findings, 9 out of 12 administrators stated that they sometimes delay their tasks if they are not urgent and due before a deadline, and 16 out of 18 teachers stated that administrators generally delay the tasks which are not urgent and due before a deadline. Although 2 administrators thought that there is no procrastination in their schools, none of the teachers in the same school agreed that administrators never delay things. While 3 teachers stated that they always face problems because of procrastination behaviors of the administrators, 6 administrators and 1 teacher stated there are other reasons behind procrastination, which are not caused by administrators. As for the findings from the qualitative interviews about administrators workload, 8 administrators and 3 teachers stated that administrators heavy workload causes procrastination, and 4 administrators and 16 teachers stated that there is no association between procrastination and workload.The gender related findings of the research revealed that male administrators procrastinate more than female administrators, and they perceive their workload heavier than their female colleagues. No significant difference was observed between female and male administrators views about conscientiousness and neuroticism subscales of the personality scale. In terms of agreeableness subscale, it was found that female administrators perceive themselves as more agreeable than female administrators. In terms of duty variable, no significant difference was found between administrators? perceptions about procrastination behaviors and agreeableness and neuroticism subscales of personality traits scale. Statistically significant differences were found between administrators perceptions about their workload and conscientiousness subscale of personality traits scale, according to duty variable. Accordingly, principals perceive themselves as having more workloads and responsible personality trait than vice-principals.No statistically significant difference was found between participating administrators? views about procrastination, workloads, and conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism personality subscales in terms of seniority, subject, and school type variables. In terms of educational background variable, no significant difference was found between the participating administrators? perceptions about procrastination, workload, agreeableness, and neuroticism personality subscales. A significant difference was found between conscientiousness subscale scores. Accordingly, those administrators with an associate degree and/or undergraduate degree perceive themselves as having more responsible personality than administrators with a postgraduate degree.Finally, a moderate positive correlation was found between procrastination and workload (r=.602, p=.01), a moderate negative correlation was found between procrastination and conscientiousness personality trait (r=-.496, p=.01), and a slight negative correlation was found between workload and conscientiousness subscale (r= -.321, p=.01).