The Role of Academic Self-efficacy and Some Aspects of Academic Procrastination on Prediction of the Levels of Dependency on Internet

This paper will examine the role of academic self-efficacy and academic procrastination of selected student samples on predicting levels of dependency on internet use. In order to do this research, we first considered students at the faculty of behavioral psychology as well as students at the faculty of engineering to be the unit of our analysis. Then we ran a random cluster sampling technique to determine the sample size. In the end, 408 samples (219 male and 189 female) were selected. In order to collect data, we used dependency scale (IDS, Davis, 2001), college academic self-efficacy questionnaire, (CASEA, Owen & Fronman, 1988), and procrastination assessment scale-students (PASS; Soloman & Rothblum, 1984). Some of the findings indicate that students’ main reasons to visit internet include: checking email messages, using social networks and gathering information, surfing through media sites, chatting, listening to music, playing internet games, wandering aimlessly, and viewing pornography. Some other findings indicate that procrastination in preparing assignments and procrastination in preparing term papers had a positive and meaningful correlation with dependency on internet. In turn, it had a negative and meaningful relationship with academic self-efficacy. This is while procrastination in preparing for exams had no significant relationship with internet dependency and academic self-efficacy. Also, the results indicate that there is a negative and significant relationship between internet dependency and academic self-efficacy. The stepwise regression analysis also indicates that academic self-efficacy has a main role in predicting internet dependency. Also, procrastination in preparing assignments has a significant role in predicting internet dependency. The results also show that the mean scores of male students in internet dependency are higher than that of the female students. As a result, it can be argued that internet dependency is an epidemic phenomenon among students causing low levels of academic self-efficacy and procrastination in preparing assignments.