Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Abstract
Background & Objectives: Academic procrastination has negative consequences for academic achievement and motivations, cognitions, behaviors, and emotions related to education. One of the most effective structures in academic procrastination is executive functions. Executive functions include the abilities that children will need in the future for school learning. Another factor affecting academic procrastination is addiction to the Internet, especially dependence on cyberspace. Dependence on cyberspace is a new issue that the whole society, many people, and families are involved in today. One of the factors that causes dependence on cyberspace to lead to academic procrastination is a lack of time management due to being involved with cyberspace. Determining the role of dependence on cyberspace, executive functions, and time management in academic procrastination requires field research in Iran. Thus, this research benefits from structural equations modeling for academic procrastination based on dependence on cyberspace and executive functions with the mediation of time management in junior female high school students.
Methods: This research method was of the correlation analysis type based on the structural equation modeling. The statistical population of the research was made up of all the female junior high school students in Kerman City, Iran, numbering 8150 people in the academic year 2022–2023. Among them, 384 people were selected as samples by a stratified random sampling method. The sample size was based on the rule proposed by researchers in structural equation modeling, which states that the number of samples should be 15 to 20 times the number of observed variables. In this research, considering 20 obvious variables, 400 people were considered, and after distributing 450 questionnaires among students, 384 people answered thoroughly. Data were gathered via the Internet Addiction Test (Widyanto & Mcmurran, 2004), the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) (Gioia et al., 2000), the Time Management Questionnaire (TMQ) (Truman & Hartley, 1995) and Procrastination Assessment Scale–Students (PASS) (Solomon & Rothbloom, 1984). Data were analyzed at a significance level 0.05 using structural equation modeling in SPSS version 25 and AMOS version 24.
Results: The results showed that the model for predicting academic procrastination based on dependence on cyberspace and executive functions with the mediation of time management is an acceptable fit for junior female high school students in Kerman. Thus, the direct effects of dependence on cyberspace on time management (β=–0.76, p<0.001), executive functions on time management (β=0.24, p=0.012), dependence on cyberspace on academic procrastination (β=0.69, p<0.001), executive functions on academic procrastination (β=–0.46, p<0.001), and time management on academic procrastination (β=–0.56, p<0.001) were significant. On the other hand, time management plays a mediating role in the relationship between dependence on cyberspace (β=0.381, p<0.001) and executive functions (β = 0.24, p<0.001) and students' academic procrastination. The goodness–of–fit indices indicated a good fit of the model (χ²/df=3.53, GFI=0.907, IFI=0.925, CFI=0.924, RMSEA=0.079).
Conclusion: According to the findings, dependence on cyberspace and weakness in executive functions reduces the ability to time management and naturally lead to an increase in academic procrastination among students.