Defense Styles, Academic Procrastination, Psychological Wellbeing, and Approaches to Learning: A Person-Oriented Approach

Abstract

This study investigates the relationships among defense styles, academic procrastination, psychological well-being, and approaches to learning. The questionnaires Defense Style Questionnaire-88, Procrastination Assessment Scale Questionnaire, Flourishing Scale, and HowULearn are used to measure the aforementioned variables, respectively. Social science students (N = 628) take part in the study. A hierarchical cluster analysis is used for clustering students into homogeneous groups. Three groups of students are identified: "psychologically stable and adaptive" (n = 285), "immature and unstable at risk" (n = 134), and "defensively dissonant" (n = 209) students. A decision tree model is used with the grade point average (GPA) score as an outcome variable to further examine interactions between the three clusters and the years of study on GPA. "Psychologically stable and adaptive" students report the highest GPA. Our findings bridge mental health variables with learning shedding light on our understanding of the use of defense styles when it comes to learning.