The relationship between academic procrastination behaviors of medical specialization students with anxiety, depression and the other factors

Background: The aim of this research was to determine the relationship between the academic procrastination behaviors of the medical specialty students and anxiety, depression and other factors. Method: This was a cross sectional study carried among medical residents working at Dokuz Eylul University and Tepecik Education and Research Hospital, during February. By using simple randomized sampling, 460 residents were chosen to participate and were conducted as a face-to-face questionnaire. Our survey; The scale includes questions about the hospital anxiety depression scale, academic procrastination scale, demographic information and some features that may cause academic postponement. The data were evaluated with SPSS 22.0 program. As statistical analysis, descriptive analysis, Chi-square test, correlation analysis and t-test were applied. Results: Participants of the study were 460 residents, 51.5% of them were female and 48.5% of them were male and their mean age was 28.83 ± 2.443. The mean score of academic procrastination was 43.81 ± 12.77. The average academic procrastination of the students at Dokuz Eylül University Hospital is 40.82 ± 13.04 and the average academic procrastination of the students at Tepecik Education and Research Hospital is 46.68 ± 11.84. Assistants studying at TEAH tended to procrastination significantly more. The average academic procrastination score of men was 45.27 ± 12.66 and that of women was 42.43 ± 12.74 and the difference between them was significant. Those under the age of 29 and those with a working year of 4 or less tended to postpone less. Those with sufficient income tended to postpone less than those with inadequate income. Those who stated that they willingly chose the place to be educated, who were satisfied with the place of education and the discipline of medicine, who stated that they could conduct research in the department, participate in scientific activities and measured their success in the department tended to postpone less. 40.7% of the participants had anxiety risk and 50.9% had depression risk. There was no significant difference between depression risk, anxiety risk and academic procrastination score of the participants. Conclusion: In our study, the relationship between anxiety and depression risk and academic procrastination tendency was examined in medical specialty students and no significant relationship was found between anxiety and depression risk and academic procrastination tendency. Men tend to have more academic procrastination than women. Specialist students studying at the Ministry of Health's educational research hospital tend to postpone more than those studying at the University Hospital. In line with these results; New studies may be suggested to find out the reasons for academic procrastination of the specialist students studying at the University and Education research hospital. Keywords: Medical specialization students, academic procrastination, anxiety, depression