Academic Procrastination and Thesis-Writing Anxiety among Graduate Students

1.1. Statement of the Problem Graduate education requires students to demonstrate, through a thesis, that they can conduct research independently. After the structured calendar of the coursework period, the thesis period is a long and uncertain process whose boundaries are drawn by the students themselves. During this process, students are expected both to carry out the research and to turn that research into an academic text. One of the difficulties most often mentioned in the literature for this period is procrastination. Indeed, 6the vast majority of graduate students procrastinate on writing their theses. Procrastination not only prolongs the thesis; it also undermines students' perceptions of their own competence. Thesis-writing anxiety, in turn, covers the tension, avoidance, and feelings of inadequacy that students experience as they approach the writing task. This study examined the relationship between academic procrastination and thesis-writing anxiety, and the role of perceived advisor support in this relationship.

3.2. Population and Sample This section describes the population of the study, how the sample was selected, and the characteristics of the participants. The 3population of this study consists of graduate students enrolled in universities in the United States. The sample consists of 312 students who were at the thesis stage in the graduate school of education of a public university during the fall semester of the 2025-2026 academic year. Participants were selected through convenience sampling. The scales were announced through the graduate school's e-mail list by means of an online form, and students who volunteered completed the form. Of the participants, 198 were master's students and 114 were doctoral students. A total of 121 students were at the proposal stage, 134 at the data collection and analysis stage, and 57 at the writing stage.

4.2. Findings for the Second Research Question Whether the level of academic procrastination differed by program type was examined with an independent-samples t-test. No significant difference was found between the mean procrastination scores of master's and doctoral students. Differences by thesis stage were examined with a one-way analysis of variance. As shown in Table 6, 4academic procrastination scores differ significantly by thesis stage (F = 5.84, p < .01). This finding shows that students' 8tendency toward academic delay is related to the stage of the thesis they are in. Table 6. ANOVA Results for Academic Procrastination Scores by Thesis Stage

5. DISCUSSION This chapter discusses the findings of the study in light of the relevant literature. The first finding of the study is that there is a moderate, positive, and significant relationship between academic procrastination and thesis-writing anxiety. Accordingly, 1as procrastination behavior increases, students' thesis-writing anxiety also increases, and procrastination therefore emerges as the main cause of anxiety. This result is consistent with previous studies reporting a relationship between procrastination and anxiety (Marlowe & Whitcombe, 2015; Sorley, 2020). Negative relationships were found between perceived advisor support and both procrastination and anxiety. This finding reveals that advisor support plays a mediating role in the relationship between procrastination and anxiety and that the anxiety of students who meet regularly with their advisors decreases (Okafor, 2018). Therefore, structuring the advising process at graduate schools will reduce students' thesis-writing anxiety.