University attendance and academic performance: Encouraging student engagement

Published date01 May 2023
AuthorSiobhan Lucey,Maria Grydaki
Date01 May 2023
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/sjpe.12334
180
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Scott J Polit Econ. 2023;70:180–199.
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/sjpe
1 | INTRODUCTION
Students' attitude of skipping classes ha s become a prevalent phenomenon in higher education and is a major
concern fo r university instructors (Oldfield et a l., 2018). Suc h non- attendance has been foun d to have neg ative
consequences for both stude nts and staf f (Brauer, 1994; Landin & Perez, 2015; Sloan et al. , 2020). According to
Romer (1993), non- attendance in economics subje cts reached high levels at three ‘relatively elite’ U.S. univers ities.
He highlighte d that in large classes, a gre ater proportion of students we re skipping class than in smalle r classes,
Received: 7 June 2 021 
|
  Accepted: 12 July 20 22
DOI: 10.1111/sjpe.12334
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
University attendance and academic performance:
Encouraging student engagement
Siobhan Lucey1| Maria Grydaki2
This is an open ac cess article und er the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivs License, which
permits us e and distributio n in any medium, provid ed the original wor k is properly cited , the use is non- commercial and no
modificat ions or adaptatio ns are made.
© 2022 The Auth ors. Scottish Journal of Political Economy publishe d by John Wiley & Sons Ltd o n behalf of Scottish Ec onomic
Soci ety.
1Departme nt of Economics, Uni versity
College Cork , Cork, Ireland
2Division of Econ omics, Universi ty of
Stirling, Sti rling, UK
Correspondence
Maria Gryd aki, Division of Econo mics,
Universit y of Stirling, FK9 4LA S tirling, UK.
Email: maria.grydaki@stir.ac.uk
Abstract
Absenteeism in higher ed ucation has motivated the in-
vestigation of its effect on academic perfor mance. This
paper examines the effect of implementing an incentive
scheme on seminar PPA (prior preparation and attendance)
and perform ance focusing on a cohort of international
postgraduate stu dents over t wo a cademic years in two
conversion economics (quantitative and non- quantitative)
modules at a Scottish business school. The result s show
that the schem e leads to an increase in t he class PPA in
both modules and in the probabilit y of passing the quan ti-
tative module, however academic performance is affected
at a lesser extent.
KEYWORDS
attendance po licy, graduate courses, pe rformance
JEL CLASSIFI CATION
A2; A23; A29
   
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LUCEY and GRY DAKI
fewer st udents were skipping class es with qu antitative content than non- quantitative an d more stu dents were
absent in core mod ules than electives.
Yet, several st udies have found a positive association between student s' attendance an d performance ( Aden
et al., 2013; D ey, 2018; Marburger, 2001; Mas singham & Herringto n, 2006) with many of the studies specifically
examining the performance of economics students (Büchele, 2021; Devadoss & Foltz, 1996; Durden & Ellis, 199 5;
Kirby & McElroy, 200 3; Rodgers, 20 01; Romer, 1993). Given the significant evidence that exists about the effect
of class attendance or non- attendance on students' performance, we pursue, first, to investigate if and how an
attendance policy influenc es class attend ance, and second , to explore w hether the pol icy affects academic per-
formance, in terms of its impa ct on atte ndance. We con tribute to t he existing/U. K.- based literature as follows.
First, t he analysis is focu sed on postgra duate modules wher e not much resear ch exists in th is group of stude nts
and secon d, no study to date has analysed the relationship bet ween an att endance policy and class at tendance
(and consequent ly academic perfor mance) at the postgradu ate level in economics modul es at a business school.
There is limited p revious researc h which focus es on post graduate classes but at a denta l school (El
Tant awi , 2009). A number of studies have focused on the effect of attend ance on students' performance in unde r-
graduate modules. So, in our s tudy, we introdu ce an incenti ve scheme to motivate high er class at tendance and
participation in two postgraduate conversion economics modules: one quantitative economics module and one
non- quantitative economics module. These two modules are considered ‘conversion’ modules because student s
are not required to have a prior knowledge/background in either the quantitative or non- quantitative economics
module. Furthe rmore, the cohorts of students consi dered in this study refer to a Scottish university and are highl y
international with approximately 95% of the students not coming from the Uni ted Kingdom. The la tter consider-
ation is rather import ant as internat ional students make up almos t a quarter of the stude nts to Scotti sh institu-
tions. Th eir impact is considered very positive becau se of the bene fits to the society and a dditional diversit y to
communities they offer, bro adening the l earning experie nce at universi ties and supp orting local businesses an d
jobs. Stati stical data show that internationa l students at higher education institutions (HEIs) in Scotland accoun t
for 22% of s tudents joining HEIs compared to 19% of students stu dying in HEIs acr oss the United Ki ngdom as a
whole over the period 2016– 2017 (Scottish Governm ent, 2018).1 Given the ir likely di versit y in terms of (a) En glish
language abilit y and (b) study methods, it is envisage d that the incentive scheme would have an ad ditional benefit
in improving the international students' academic experience (Bamford, 2008a , 2008b; Wu & Hammond, 20 11).
We conclude that implementing an attendance policy along the lines of the seminar incentive scheme does im-
prove attendance but has a limited impact o n academ ic perfo rmance. T he obtain ed eviden ce applies in both
quantitative a nd non- quantitative modu les to a different extent .
Section 2 presents the related literature on the factors that affect class attendance and university perfor-
mance. The introduced incentive scheme is described in Section 3. Section 4 pres ents the data and the econ omet-
ric methodology. Section 5 reports the results. Section 6 concludes wit h a summary, reflect ions and suggestion s
for future rese arch.
2 | LITERATURE RE VIEW
2.1 | Attendance and academic performance
Both literature and anecdotal evidence indicate that declining student attendance is a common phenomenon at
universities . Several studies have investigated university students' re asons for non- attendance. B aderin (2005)
found that lack of prepar ation, unsui table timin g, and a preference to st udy on one's own as key factors. The
accessibilit y to ot her sources of information (e.g. sourc ing class material either online or fr om friends and
1The correspo nding enrollm ent of internati onal student s at HEIs in England , Wales and Nort hern Ireland i s 19%, 16% and 10%, resp ectively.

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