Abstract

Procrastination and academic cheating behaviours are pervasive issues in secondary schools, with far-reaching consequences for student success and academic integrity. The menace keeps persisting despite several measures that have been launched against it which belived to be caused by several factors . It is believed however, that counselling interventions can play a significant role in reducing academic cheating behaviours among students if not totally eradicate. To establish this, this study investigated procrastination as a determinant of proneness to academic cheating behaviours among in-school adolescents in Ilorin metropolis, Kwara State, Nigeria. Two null hypotheses were formulated in this respect and quasi-experimental (pretest posttest with control group) design was adopted to carry out the study. This study involved 43 participants who are selected from the three Local Government Areas of Ilorin Metropolis. The data collection instruments include “Proneness to Academic Cheating Behaviour Questionnaire”; and “Procrastination Scale” with reliability indices of 0.89 and 0.90 respectively. The descriptive statistics of percentage was used to describe the demographic factors of the respondents; while the inferential statistics of Analysis of Co-Variance (ANCOVA) was used to test the null hypotheses. The results of the study revealed that cognitive restructuring are effective counselling intervention in reducing students’ proneness to academic cheating behaviours and discovered that cognitive restructuring intervention did not significantly reduced procrastination behaviour among in-school adolescents. It was recommended among others that school counsellors and the authority should implement long-term follow-up measures to assess the maintenance of reduced proneness to cheating behaviour and reduced procrastination.