Investigating the role of goal motives in predicting bedtime procrastination using a daily diary study design: a registered report

Objectives: Previous operationalisations of bedtime procrastination were incongruent with its definition. We addressed this gap in knowledge by testing a new operationalisation that incorporates the three necessary and sufficient conditions of bedtime procrastination. We investigate the motivational antecedents of bedtime procrastination in daily life with this new operationalisation. Methods and Measures: Participants (n = 336) self-reported goal motives, chronotype, and typical sleep metrics on a Sunday evening. For the following 7-days, participants self-assessed their 24-h sleep metrics, goal-regulatory variables, and psychological needs. Results: The bedtime discrepancy scores from the new assessment correlate in expected direction with sleep quantity and chronotype. However, our findings pertaining to motivational correlates of bedtime procrastination showed low compatibility with our expectations. Discussion: We introduced a new operationalisation of bedtime procrastination that aligns with its definition, and which can complement existing approaches that primarily encompass trait-like elements. Incorporating all three necessary and sufficient conditions of bedtime procrastination at the daily level suggests previous prevalence estimates of this sleep-related behaviour obtained with trait-like operationalisations may be overestimated. The low compatibility between our expectations regarding the motivational antecedents of bedtime procrastination suggest a need for congruence between the levels at which antecedents are captured with this sleep-related behaviour.