ABSTRACT
The study investigated the effects of Beck’s Cognitive and Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapies on academic procrastination among secondary school students in Egor Local Area of Edo State. It also examined the effects of treatment by sex, age and parental educational background of the students. To guide the study, six research questions were raised and six corresponding hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 alpha level of significance.
The study adopted the quasi experimental research design using the pre-test, post-test control group. The population for the study comprised all students in mixed Public Secondary Schools in Egor Local Government Area of Edo State with a total population of two thousand five hundred and six students. Using multistage sampling technique, a sample of 91 students with ages ranging from fourteen to nineteen years was drawn from three randomly selected schools which participated in the study. An instrument titled Procrastination Assessment Scale for Students (PASS) with a reliability co-efficient of 0.731 was used for data collection. The treatment package comprised Beck’s Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy. Treatment lasted for six weeks and data collected were analysed using mean and standard deviation, independent paired sample t-test statistics, Analysis of variance (ANOVA), analysis of co-variance (ANCOVA) and post-hoc multiple comparison statistics.
The findings of the study revealed that Beck’s Cognitive Behavioural therapy and Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy were equally effective on academic procrastination. However, there was a significant difference in the effect of treatment by Beck’s Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and the control group in favour of Beck’s Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and there was also a significant difference in the effect of treatment by Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy and control group in favour of REBT. The treatments were effective on academic procrastination irrespective of sex, age and parental educational background of the participants. Based on the findings, it was recommended that deliberate efforts should be made by stakeholders in education, Counselling Psychologists and School Counsellors to embrace the use of Beck’s Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy in modifying academic procrastination among secondary school students irrespective of their sex, age and parental educational background in order to reduce academic procrastination of students.
