Procrastination was the issue most often reported as harming academic performance in a survey of 65,950 students at 97 U.S. higher-education institutions. In the study, 45.4% of respondents said procrastination had affected their academic performance, while 45.7% said it had caused significant distress.
The research, published October 7, 2026, in PLOS One, analyzed survey responses collected from January through May 2025. It found procrastination was experienced by 72.3% of students, close to the 73.8% who reported experiencing stress.
What the survey measured
Students were asked about issues they had experienced during the previous 12 months and whether those issues affected their academic performance or caused significant distress. The findings therefore describe students’ reported experiences. They do not establish that procrastination caused lower grades or other objectively measured academic outcomes.
The 45.4% figure applies to the full survey sample. A higher proportion, 62.7%, reported academic harm among students who had experienced procrastination. The study also reported that 65.9% of affected undergraduates said procrastination had harmed their academic work. Those conditional figures use narrower groups as their denominator and should not be confused with the full-sample result.
The paper compared procrastination with other health and life issues. Financial concerns were reported as affecting academic performance by 16.1% of students, while ADHD was reported by 12.9%. Distress comparisons covered life issues rather than health issues, so they do not provide a like-for-like ranking across every issue measured.
Limits on interpretation
The study’s author cautioned that the survey relied on a single-item measure of procrastination and might not represent all U.S. students or higher-education institutions. The results may also not apply to students outside the United States.
The paper further notes that procrastination can overlap with stress, sleep and other issues. That interaction makes it difficult to treat the reported effects as entirely separate or to conclude from the survey that procrastination alone drove academic difficulties.
The findings offer a snapshot of how students perceived common challenges during the 12 months before responding. They identify procrastination as the problem most frequently linked by respondents to academic harm and significant distress, but the survey design does not determine whether addressing procrastination would improve academic results.