Procrastination at the conclusion of the master's thesis: Results from a survey on computer science students in Northeast Argentina

It is straightforward to find ourselves avoiding tasks or situations every day, instead of making an effort to deal with them. This behavior is known as “procrastination”, and it is very common in industrial societies. In the educational context, one of the most likely procrastination situations is the development of a bachelor degree thesis or Master's thesis where the student is supposed to work on an original written work. This paper presents the findings of a survey on typical barriers of the thesis's development, carried out with 51 Computer Science Master's students. The survey measured participants' procrastination using the General Procrastination Scale proposed by Lay and their current situation in the thesis's development. The findings of the survey show that the main barriers to begin the final thesis work are lack of time and motivation. Furthermore, general and descriptive information about the students' current situation was obtained.