Student Attendance and Academic Achievement: A Research Note

Joel Snell, Saul Mekies and Dan Tesar

 

Professor David Romer, University of California-Berkeley asks the question: “should professors take attendance?” (Romer 1993) He notes that few studies have been completed in this area or relative to this issue.

His study assigns ratio level analysis to grades and attendance. There is also a cross curriculum and multi-campus comparison. His conclusion is that attendance and academic performance are strongly related. Therefore students who often attend class also get the best grades. In a footnote, he suggests some problems with the study such as attendance was not taken every day, thus there is a statistical measurement error.

We utilized a purposive sample of 159 students in 5 social science classes during one semester under one teacher. We chose a more cautious statistical analysis (2x2 table, Chi Square.) By comparing “good grades" (A-B's) as opposed to all other grades, we discovered that those who attended 95 of the time were significantly more likely to earn an A or B grade. We discovered a chi-square value of 41313, well beyond the .001 level.

When students stayed in the course but no longer attended were statistically controlled for, the chi-square value was 19.69, again beyond the .001 level. This may be important

to other researchers, as we controlled for "drop outs."

Attendance was taken every day. Further, at the end of each class, students wrote a summary of the lecture. The summaries were then read and corrected by the professor, stamped, signed and returned to the student during the following class. Attendance was weighted as 25 of the grade.

It would appear to these authors that a relationship exists between attendance and earning a grade A or B.

References

Romer, David (1993) "Do Students Go to Class? Should They? Journal of Economic Perspectives,7(3). 167-174.

 

 

Joel Snell. Professor. Department of Social Sciences, Kirkwood College. Saul Mekies, Pro-fessor. Department of Education. Kirkwood Col-lege. Dan Tesar. Professor. Department of Social Sciences, Kirkwood College.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Joel Snell. Professor. Department of Social Sciences, Kirkwood College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52406-2068.