Purpose: Death anxiety is an important existential concern that can affect students’ psychological well-being and academic functioning. This study examined whether academic procrastination mediates the association between problem-solving styles and death anxiety among university students.
Methods: A descriptive–correlational, cross-sectional design was used. A total of 500 undergraduate students completed self-report measures of problem-solving styles (PSS), academic procrastination (TPS), and death anxiety (DAS). Structural equation modeling techniques, specifically a two-step approach comprising confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and path analysis, were conducted. Bootstrapping procedures were applied to test indirect effects.
Results: The hypothesized mediation model demonstrated acceptable fit. Maladaptive problem-solving styles were associated with higher academic procrastination, and higher procrastination was associated with higher death anxiety. The indirect effect of maladaptive problem-solving styles on death anxiety through academic procrastination was statistically significant. The direct effect also remained significant, indicating partial mediation. R² values indicated that the model accounted for a meaningful proportion of variance in academic procrastination and a smaller, but still meaningful, proportion of variance in death anxiety.
Conclusion: The findings are consistent with a cognitive–behavioral–existential framework in which maladaptive problem-solving patterns are associated with academic procrastination, which in turn is related to elevated death anxiety. Because the data are cross-sectional, causal inferences cannot be made; nevertheless, the results suggest that integrating problem-solving training with approaches targeting task avoidance may be a relevant focus for addressing students’ existential and academic concerns in university counseling settings.