A reading catalogue on the science of delay.

Four summaries, open to read

Each entry runs to roughly 600 words and cites work that is publicly indexed. Where a result has been challenged or failed to replicate, that appears in the same summary rather than in a footnote.

• Meta-analysis · 2007

  What Piers Steel's 2007 meta-analysis reported, and what it did not

  A synthesis of several hundred correlational studies identified task aversiveness, impulsiveness and low self-efficacy as the strongest recorded correlates — and found the popular link to perfectionism far weaker than expected.

• Theory · Mood regulation

  The mood-repair account of delay: Sirois and Pychyl

  A body of work reframing delay as a short-term emotion-regulation move rather than a time-management failure. The summary sets out the argument and the measurement problems it inherits.

• Methods · Measurement

  Definitional drift: why procrastination scales do not agree

  Katrin Klingsieck and Frode Svartdal have documented how differently the construct is defined across instruments, and what that inconsistency does to comparisons between studies.

• Trials · Interventions

  What has been tested in randomised trials, and at what effect size

  An account of the intervention literature, including Alexander Rozental's controlled trials, the implementation-intention studies, and the small samples that limit several widely repeated results.

What is not in this catalogue

Stating the exclusions is part of the editorial position, not a legal footnote. The list below is enforced across every page.

Editorial standards

• Named sources or no claim Every empirical statement is attributed to identifiable authors and a locatable publication. Figures that cannot be traced to a source are removed rather than rounded.
• Contested findings are marked as contested Where a result has attracted methodological criticism, failed to replicate, or rests on a sample too small to carry it, the summary says so in the same paragraph as the finding.
• No assumption about the reader Delay Review holds no information about who is reading and makes no inference about anyone's circumstances, habits, health or state of mind. Nothing on this site is written as though the reader's situation were known. Material is written in the third person for that reason.
• Description, not instruction Summaries report what researchers measured. They are not methods, systems, programmes or sequences of steps, and are not presented as producing any result.

Common questions

What kind of material appears in the library?

Written summaries of published academic research on procrastination, delay discounting and self-regulation. The catalogue covers psychology and behavioural economics. It does not cover clinical treatment.

Is an account needed to read the articles?

No. Every article in the library is on the open site with no registration, no email requirement and no paywall.

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Where Delay Review offers material for purchase, requests made within 30 days of the transaction are refunded. The refund policy sets out the procedure and the processing times.

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Because individual accounts cannot be verified and tend to be read as claims about what others will experience. Delay Review publishes none, and does not solicit them.

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