The present study explored whether a significant relationship exists between academic
procrastination and academic achievement in high school learners within South Africa. It
furthermore examined whether certain personality traits of individuals are more prone to
procrastination than others. It lastly investigated the relationships between gender and
academic procrastination, age and academic procrastination, number of siblings and academic
procrastination; and area of residence and academic procrastination. The research sample
consisted of 349 high school learners aged between 12 and 19 years old (n=167 male, n=180
female, n=2 gender not disclosed). Data was collected by means of the Personal Information
Questionnaire (PIQ), the Tuckman Procrastination Scale (TPS) and the Ten-Item Personality
Inventory (TIPI). A significant negative correlation was found between procrastination and
academic achievement. The correlations between procrastination and gender, age, area of
residence and number of siblings respectively were not significant. Conscientiousness and
Emotional Stability were both found to be significantly negatively related to procrastination,
however, the relations between procrastination and Extraversion and Agreeableness
respectively were not significant. An anomaly found in the present study was the negative
relation between procrastination and Openness to Experience, and it is postulated that this
finding may be due to the TIPI’s inability to measure the individual facets of each Big Five
Factor domain or that it could be ascribed to the need for cognition.