ABSTRACT

The relationship between absenteeism and academic performance was investigated among 172 students enrolled in
an Introduction to Business course. The students who were absent from class on the random days attendance was
taken performed significantly lower on subsequent tests. In addition, the total number of days absent from class was
negatively correlated with performance on a comprehensive final exam. Finally, the number of days absent was found
to be the second most important factor after GPA, in predicting student performance on the final exam. These
findings suggest there may be some value in adopting intervention strategies designed to encourage attendance.

INTRODUCTION

In a traditional university setting, class meetings are the primary means of delivering educational services. However,
as almost anyone who has ever taught a large section of an introductory course can confirm, student attendance at
these meetings is far from perfect. As educators, we want our students to attend class. We enjoy teaching and
interacting with students and work hard to make our classes worthy of the students' time and energy. We know who
our best students are because they attend class regularly, but we often have a hard time putting a face to the names
of the students that fail. Based on this anecdotal evidence, we assume that students who attend class regularly
benefit from the lectures, films, and learning activities designed to facilitate their acquisition of knowledge.
Conversely, we assume that excessive absences from class results in poor academic performance. These
assumptions, however, are not based on empirical evidence.

To encourage class attendance, we have always spent part of the first class meeting telling our students that it is
important for them to attend class, that they will learn more if they attend class, and that students who attend class
regularly generally earn higher grades for the course and vice versa. Unfortunately, when we searched the literature
for empirical evidence to back up our claims, we failed to find any studies specifically examining the relationship
between students' absenteeism during an Introduction to Business course and their subsequent performance on
exams. Moreover, studies over the past fifteen years that have examined the relationship between absenteeism and
academic achievement in related fields such as economics, finance, and operations management have produced
different, sometimes contradictory, results.

Several studies have linked class absences with lower grades. For example, Brocato (1989) found a strong negative
correlation between absences and grades among undergraduate students enrolled in Principles of Macroeconomics
and Intermediate Macroeconomics courses he taught over a four-year period. Park and Kerr (1990) also found that
attendance was a determinant of student performance in a Money and Banking course, but not as important as a
student's GPA and percentile rank on the American College Test (ACT).

Browne et al. (1991), however, found that students who studied on their own did just well as students that attended a
typically structured Principles of Microeconomics class on the Test of Understanding College Economics (TUCE).
Their conclusion: "Apparently, instructors' classroom activities have negligible impacts on student performance,
measured by multiple choice items tapping memory, application and simple analysis competencies" (Browne et al.
1991, p. 29).

Based on attendance counts taken in all undergraduate economics courses taught at three "relatively elite"
universities, Romer (1993) concluded that absenteeism was rampant, with typically about one-third of the students
absent from class. (This finding may explain why so many studies of absenteeism and academic performance have
students who are enrolled in economics course as their subjects.) Romer also reported that regression estimates of
the relation between attendance and performance in one large Intermediate Macroeconomics course suggested that
attendance might substantially affect learning. Considering only students who did all of the problem sets (in order to
control for the impact of student motivation to do well in the course) and controlling for prior grade point average, he
found the difference in performance between a student who attends class regularly and one who attends class
sporadically to be approximately one full letter grade.

Durden and Ellis (1995) also found that attendance does matter for academic achievement in a Principles of
Economics course. However, their findings suggest that the effect is nonlinear, becoming important only after a
student misses four classes during the semester. They concluded that what really seems to matter is excessive
absenteeism.

Chan, Shum and Wright (1997) studied the effect of class attendance on student performance in a Principles of
Finance course using Tobin's (1958) TOBIT model and a two-stage equation developed by Heckmen (1976, 1979).
They found a significant positive relationship between attendance and student performance in the TOBIT model, but
only a weak relationship between attendance and student performance in Heckman's two-stage model. Furthermore,
they found that a mandatory attendance policy did not improve performance. Lai and Chan (2000) also examined the
relationship between mandatory class attendance and student performance in two sections of a Principles of
Microeconomics course, one with a mandatory attendance policy and the other without one. Attendance was found to
be positive and statistically significant at the 1 percent level. For every 1 percent attendance, an average student
received almost a 1 percent increase in his/her course average (on a 100 percent scale). In contrast to Chan, Shum
and Wright (1997) findings, however, they found a mandatory attendance policy boosted an average student's
performance by 6.7 percent.

More recently, Marburger (2001) investigated the relationship between students' absenteeism during a Principles of
Microeconomics course and their subsequent performance on exams. He found that students who missed class on a
given day were significantly more likely to respond incorrectly to questions relating to material covered that day than
students who were present. In contrast, Peters, Kethley, and Bullington (2002) found that class attendance did not
affect students' exam performance in an introductory operations management course. Finally, Durden and Ellis
(2003) found that class attendance and motivation were related in their study of 252 students enrolled in a Principles
of Economics course. However, they note that if motivation is not controlled for, the effect of absence from class on
performance may be overstated.

After reviewing the literature, we began to question our assumptions about attendance and academic performance.
Like many university professors who teach large, introductory courses, we had no attendance policy. After all, taking
attendance in large classes is difficult and time consuming. Moreover, we prefer to treat our students as adults who
are responsible for their choices and attending class is one of those choices.

We began to wonder, however, if our laissez faire approach to attendance was actually encouraging students to miss
class. Although we told our students on the first day of class that attendance was important, we kept our comments
relatively brief and only repeated them after reporting the results of tests. Attendance was sometimes poor,
suggesting that many students did not believe our claims about its importance.

Thus, this study set out to answer three important questions as they related to our Introduction to Business course.
First, what was the extent of absenteeism? Second, how much, if any, does absenteeism affect student learning?
Finally, in light of our research findings as they relate to answering the first two questions, should we make any
changes to our course policies to combat absenteeism?

METHOD

Subjects and Setting

The subjects were 172 undergraduate students enrolled in a large section of Introduction to Business at a medium-
size, state university located in the upper Midwest. An equal number of men and women were enrolled in the course.
A review of university records revealed that 70 students were classified as freshman, 80 as sophomores, 15 as
juniors, and 7 as seniors. In terms of their major, forty-five of the students had declared business majors (30 in
Business Administration, 6 in Marketing, 5 in Accounting, and 1 each in Economics, Finance, Human Resources
Management, and Management Information Systems). Seventy-one students were non-business majors. The three
most popular non-business majors for students enrolled in the course were Education (15 students), Mass
Communication (13 students) and Nursing (eight students). A further 56 students enrolled in the course had yet to
declare a major. Table 1 presents an academic profile of the subjects based on their high school (percentile) rankings,
ACT scores, grade point averages (GPA), number of credit hours attempted, number of credit hours completed, and
current credit hours (i.e., course load).
RESULTS

Academic Performance

Of the 172 students who enrolled in the course, 21 withdrew and three did not sit the final exam, yielding an overall
retention rate of 86.05 percent. The overall class average for the course was 76.51 percent, with a high of 94.85
percent, a low of 31.50 percent, and a standard deviation of 10.88. The distribution of grades was as follows: A - 11
(7%); B - 57 (39%); C - 45 (30%); D - 20 (14%); F - 14 (11%). The overall pass rate for the course was 89.86 percent.

DISCUSSION

In this study, we set out to answer three questions with regard to our Introduction to Business course: What was the
extent of absenteeism? How much, if any, does absenteeism affect student learning? And considering the answers to
the first two questions, should we make any changes to our course policies to combat absenteeism?

Concerning the first question, on a typical class day roughly one-third of the students enrolled in the course were not
in class. This figure is comparable to the rate of absenteeism reported by Romer (1993) in economics courses and
leads to the same conclusion--"absenteeism is rampant" (p 173). In regard to the second question, we found a very
strong statistical relationship between absenteeism and academic performance. Specifically, the students who were
absent from class on the random days attendance was taken performed significantly lower on subsequent tests. In
addition, the total number of days absent from class was negatively correlated with student performance on the
comprehensive final exam. Finally, after GPA, the number of days absent was the second most important factor in
predicting student performance on the final exam.

Faced with similar research findings regarding the relationship between absenteeism and academic performance,
Romer (1993) suggested experimenting with making class attendance mandatory. We caution against such an
approach. Mandatory attendance policies, which impose an academic penalty for failure to attend class regularly,
may have some unintended consequences. For example, the quality of classroom decorum may decline, due to the
presence of resentful and disinterested students. As Stephenson (1994) notes, "a captive audience is not an ideal
learning environment" (p.307).

Having found a significant negative relationship between absenteeism and academic performance, as educators we
feel challenged to identify measures that will encourage class attendance. Approaching the problem of student
absenteeism from an organizational behavior modification perspective (Luthans & Kreitner, 1985), we offer the
following suggestions based on a functional analysis of the antecedents and consequences of the desired behavior--
class attendance:

In formulating the above recommendations, we placed the emphasis on positive reinforcement, which should
enhance students' learning by encouraging class attendance. It should be noted, however, that class attendance
alone does not guarantee that learning will take place. Some students who attend class regularly still struggle
academically. However, the best instructor, no matter how clear in providing explanations and examples, will certainly
not be successful in teaching the academically challenged student who fails to show up for class. Future research
should assess whether strategies designed to increase class attendance actually do so, and if so, whether academic
performance improves.

Sauers, Daniel A.
McVay, Gloria J.
Deppa, Brant D.
 The eects of attendance on academic
performance: panel data evidence for
Introductory Microeconomics
Luca Stanca
Economics Department
University of Milan Bicocca
July 2004
Abstract
This paper presents new evidence on the eects of attendance on academic performance. We
exploit a large panel data set for Introductory Microeconomics students to explicitly take into
account the eect of unobservable factors correlated with attendance, such as ability, eort and
motivation. We nd that neither proxy variables nor instrumental variables provide a viable
solution to the omitted variable bias. Panel estimators indicate that attendance has a positive and
signicant impact on performance. Lecture and classes have a similar eect on performance
individually, although their impact cannot be identied separately. Overall, the results indicate
that, after controlling for unobservable student characteristics, teaching has an important
independent eect on learning
Introduction
It is commonly assumed that university students benet from attending lectures. This
assumption, however, needs to be tested, as developments in information technology are
increasingly calling for a reassessment of the traditional approach to university education, largely
based on physical attendance of lectures and classes, and a number of alternative weightless
educational models, based on distance learning, are being introduced. Nevertheless, as pointed
out by Romer (1993), until recently there was relatively little evidence about attendance and its
eects on student learning.1 In the past decade, a number of studies have examined the
relationship between students attendance (or absenteeism) and academic performance, generally
nding that attendance does matter for academic achievement (see e.g. Durden and Ellis (1995),
Devadoss and Foltz (1996), Chan et al. (1997), Marburger (2001) Rodgers (2001), Bratti and
Staolani (2002), Dolton et al. (2003), Kirby and McElroy (2003)). This kind of evidence has led
some authors to call for measures to increase student attendance and even to consider the
possibility of making attendance mandatory in some undergraduate courses.2 The main problem
in assessing the eects of attendance on academic per- formance is that attendance levels are not
exogenous, given that students choose whether to attend lectures and classes, and that this choice
is affected by unobservable individual characteristics, such as ability, eort and motivation, that
are also likely to determine performance: better students, who are more able, work harder or are
more motivated, tend to have higher attendance levels, other things being equal. This implies that
estimates of the impact of attendance on academic performance are likely to be subject to
omitted variable bias. Most existing studies either brush aside this problem or attempt to dis-
entangle the impact of attendance on performance from unobservable ability and motivational
factors by including in the set of regressors proxies of capability (students grade-point-averages,
scores on college entry exams, etc.), eort (homework-assignment completion) and motivation
(students self reported interest in the course). However, such indicators are generally
animperfect measure of ability and motivation. As a consequence, OLS esti 1Even though
teaching is a very large part of what we do, we know very little about many aspects of instruction
and learning (Romer, 1993, p. 214).See Romer (1993) and the following discussion in Brauer et
al. (1994) mates of the returns to attendance obtained from specications that include appropriate
control variables are still likely to be biased and inconsistent, to the extent that they incorrectly
attribute to attendance the eect of the component of ability and motivation not captured by the
controls. One possible solution would be to nd appropriate instruments for atten- dance.
However, it is generally quite dicult to nd variables correlated with attendance but
uncorrelated with unobservable ability, eort and motivation. An alternative route, followed in
this paper, is to exploit the variability of attendance and performance in the time dimension, if a
panel data set is available. This allows to take into account time-invariant unobservable fac- tors
that aect both attendance and performance, and therefore to eliminate the omitted variable bias
that characterizes estimates of the eect of attendance on performance based on cross-sectional
data. For the analysis presented in this study, we collected observations on the performance of
766 Introductory Microeconomics students on several tests, and their attendance levels at
lectures and classes covering the material examined on those tests. We also have information on
proxies for ability (high school grade, grade point average, exam speed, and prociency in
calculus), eort (number of study hours) and motivation (subject and teacher evaluation),
candidate instruments for attendance and a number of other individual characteristics. We can
therefore compare the results obtained with three approaches: OLS controlling for unobservable
factors with proxy variables; instrumental variables (2SLS) for attendance; panel estimators
(random eects and xed eects). We nd that both OLS and IV estimates of the eects of
attendance on performance are positive and signicant. However, neither proxy variables nor
instrumental variables provide a viable solution to the omitted variable bias: proxy variables do
not capture all the correlation between the regressor of interest and the omitted factors, while
candidate instrumental variables are found to be correlated with the error term. When we
eliminate the omitted variable bias, using a xed eect estimator, the point estimate for
attendance is about half the size of the OLS and IV estimates, but the eect on performance
remains positive and signicant. We also nd that lecture and classes have a similar eect on
performance individually, although their impact cannot be identied separately. Overall, the
results indicate that teaching is a key factor for student learning. The remainder of the paper is
structured as follows. Section 2 reviews the empirical literature on student attendance and
academic performance Sections 3 and 4 describe the data set and the econometric methodology,
respectively. Section 5 presents the results of the empirical analysis. Section 6 concludes with a
discussion of the main ndings and the implications of the analysis.

Literature review

In a widely cited study, Romer (1993) reported evidence on absenteeism in undergraduate

economics courses at three major US universities, nding an average attendance rate of about 67
percent. The paper also presented regression results, based on a sample of 195 Intermediate
Macroeconomics students, indicating a positive and signicant relationship between student
attendance and exam performance. This result was found to be qualitatively robust to the
inclusion among the explanatory variables of students grade point average and the fraction of
problem sets completed.3On the basis of these ndings, Romer suggested that measures aimed at
increasing attendance, including making attendance mandatory, could be considered.4 Prior to
Romer, Schmidt (1983) had investigated student time allocation in a sample of 216
macroeconomic principles students, nding that time spent in lectures and discussion sections
has a positive and signicant eect on exam performance, even after controlling for hours of
study. Park and Kerr (1990) had found an inverse relationship between students attendance and
their course grades in a money and banking course over a four-year period, even after controlling
for the eect of unobservable motivation by means of students self-reported hours of study and
their perceived value of the course.

Results
This section presents the estimation results. We start by estimating equation (1) by OLS, and
examine the impact on the estimated coecient for attendance of controlling for unobservable
factors such as ability, eort and motivation. We then consider the results obtained with IV for
the same set of specications. Next, we present estimates obtained for panel data estimators
(random eects and xed eects). Finally, we examine the respective eects of lecture and class
attendance on performance
Discussion and conclusions
The results of the empirical analysis reported in this paper suggest two main conclusions. First,
neither proxy variables nor instrumental variables pro- vide a viable solution to the omitted
variable bias in estimating the eect of attendance on academic performance. The alternative
solution proposed in this paper is to exploit the panel structure of the data set to explicitly take
into account the eect of unobservable factors correlated with attendance, such as student ability,
eort and motivation. Second, after controlling for unobservable factors, attendance of either
lectures or classes is found to have a smaller but signicant impact on test scores in an
Introductory Microeco- nomics course. On the basis of this evidence, can we conclude that
teaching has a positive impact on student learning? One possible objection could be that test
scores are not a good measure of learning: attendance could aect exam performance because
students learn how to do well in the exam, without any actual eect on the quality of learn- ing
(see e.g. Deere, 1994). This can be true if, for example, lectures only improve exam-taking skills,
or provide information on the topics and type of questions that will be in the exam or, more
generally, lectures present exam- inable material that is not covered in the textbook.26 This kind
of critique, however, does not apply to the data set investigated in this paper: all students had
access to detailed lecture notes and past exam papers on the course web site, so that attendance
did not reveal any private information. In addi- tion, lectures and classes followed very closely
the textbooks, so that all exam questions could be answered correctly by students not attending
lectures or classes, who had relied exclusively on the texts to prepare for the exams. It should
also be observed that the marking scheme was fully objective, so that test scores could not be
used to reward students for attendance
The Relationship of School Absenteeism with Body Mass Index, Academic
Achievement, and Socioeconomic Status among Fourth-Grade Children

Abstract

Background

Data from a school-based study concerning fourth-grade childrens dietary recall accuracy were linked
with data from the South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) through the South Carolina Budget
and Control Board Office of Research and Statistics (ORS) to investigate the relationships of childrens
school absenteeism with body mass index (BMI), academic achievement, and socioeconomic status (SES)

Methods
Data for all variables were available for 920 fourth-grade children during two school years (20052006,
20062007). Number of school days absent for each child and eligibility for free/reduced-price school
meals (SES measure) were provided to ORS by SCDE. Childrens weight and height were measured by
research staff; age/sex specific BMI percentile was calculated and grouped into categories. For academic
achievement, Palmetto Achievement Challenge Tests scores were provided by the school district. The
associations of absenteeism with BMI, academic achievement, SES, and school year were investigated
with logistic binomial models using the modified sandwich variance estimator to adjust for multiple
outcomes within schools.

Results
The relationships between absenteeism and each of BMI percentile category and SES were not
significant (all coefficient p values > 0.118). The relationship between absenteeism and academic
achievement was inversely significant (p value < 0.0001; coefficient = 0.087).

Conclusions
These results support the inverse relationship between absenteeism and academic achievement that
was expected and has been found by other researchers. The lack of significant results concerning the
relationships between absenteeism and both BMI and SES disagrees with earlier, limited research. More
research to investigate these relationships is needed.

INTRODUCTION

The implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 created a focus on academic achievement,
requiring all public schools to administer state-wide annual standardized tests. 1 The Child Nutrition and
WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 created a focus on student health, requiring each school district to
develop and implement a local wellness policy that promotes student health and reduces childhood
obesity.2 Balancing these two legislations encourages schools to take a coordinated approach when
developing school policies and school health programs. Recognizing and understanding the associations
of student health with school performance is an important first step toward addressing these school
policies.
The incidence of childhood obesity has increased dramatically in the United States over the last several
decades.34 This epidemic has led to increased research on the long-term health implications of obesity
in children and adolescents. Overweight and obese children face social discrimination and are at greater
risk for health consequences such as type 2 diabetes and adverse levels of cardiovascular disease risk
factors.5
The National Coordinating Committee on School Health and Safety implemented a project 611 to promote
awareness of evidence linking health and school performance and to identify knowledge gaps. In one of
the six review articles published for that project, Taras and Potts-Datema 6 reviewed studies published
from 19942004 that investigated the association of obesity with academic outcomes among school-
aged children. That literature review,6 which was published in 2005, revealed a research gap, particularly
concerning the association of childhood obesity and school absenteeism, as only one article (by
Schwimmer and colleagues12) had investigated this relationship. Schwimmer and colleagues 12 found that
severely-obese children and adolescents reported significantly more school days missed than the general
student population; however, investigating this association was not their primary aim. To our knowledge,
the research gap persists; since the Taras and Potts-Datema review, 6 only one published article (by Geier
and colleagues13) has directly assessed the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and
absenteeism in children. Geier and colleagues13 investigated this relationship among fourth- to sixth-
grade children in the inner city of Philadelphia, PA, and found that obese children were absent
significantly more than healthy-weight children.
To help fill the research gap, the current article investigated the correlation of childrens absenteeism
with BMI, academic achievement, and socioeconomic status (SES). It was hypothesized that absenteeism
and BMI would be significantly and positively correlated, and that absenteeism would be significantly
and inversely correlated with academic achievement and SES. To conduct analyses for this investigation,
data from a school-based study concerning fourth-grade childrens dietary recall accuracy 14 were linked
with data from the South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) through the South Carolina Budget
and Control Board Office of Research and Statistics (ORS).

Conclusion
The current articles analyses support the inverse relationship between childrens absenteeism and
academic achievement that was expected and has been found by other researchers. However, these
analyses fail to support the positive relationship between absenteeism and BMI and the inverse
relationship between absenteeism and SES that was expected and has been found by other researchers.
Studies designed specifically for the purpose of investigating these relationships and collecting actual,
individual-level data are needed to further close these gaps in the literature.

Suzanne Domel Baxter,