Does Attendance Matter?
I recently reviewed an article from a Harvard student discussing their own lack of engagement with their studies. Part of the argument made by that student, was that they could get away with not working so much and still get decent grades. They may think this, but what does the evidence say, and specifically, does attendance matter?
My own attitude to attendance by my students has changed multiple times through the years. At points I have been upset by lack of attendance, have chased and chastised students, and thought very actively about what to do to raise attendance. At other times I have taken the attitude that they are adults, it is their choice, and not my job to police this, so what will be, will be.
Currently I am in an ‘active’ phase, partly because we have rolled out new modules and programmes since 2022, and I had a big part in designing these, so I am more invested in the courses than at other points, and want them to go well. In relation to this, and as discussed during my series on lectures, I have designed teaching session with many more active methods. These only work well if I have a good number of people in attendance, so not turning up is not just a (potential) issue for the students themselves, but for their peers as well.
Other than making classroom activities work however, what is the real impact of non-attendance? Let’s consider the evidence.
Older evidence
I will begin with some interesting discussion of attendance on economics courses from the 1990s, several of the findings resonate with the variation in my own feelings.
Durden and Ellis (95) find that slightly lower than average attendance has very little effect on grades, but there is an effect of very poor attendance, and this effect is progressively larger, the worse the attendance. A possible interpretation is that good students are more likely to have a habit of attendance, and therefore only weaker students will be found in the low-attendance bracket.
Romer (93) finds that typical absenteeism is around one third, with this being larger on bigger courses, and lower on more technical courses. Student perception of teaching quality via course evaluations also has a significant impact on attendance, better taught courses have higher attendance. Finally, attendance tends to be worse in core modules.
This paper also find a significant positive effect of attendance on performance, this could reflect wider motivation/skill, but even when trying to correct for this by only sampling students who completed all the work, attendance has a significant effect. This relationship holds after controlling for prior performance.
As a consequence the author suggests that mandatory attendance may be called for to boost performance, and that such an approach carried out on a random sample within a course would allow for experimental evidence on the effect of attendance.
In correspondence about the Romer article (Journal of Economic Perspectives Summer 1994), Jurgen Brauer also advocates mandatory attendance as it improves class atmosphere, and instils professionalism, a point I echoed in the introduction. A necessary pre-requisite is that the class genuinely adds value to the student e.g. they get something they cannot get elsewhere. This raises the question of how to assess this, most course leaders will advocate for the importance of their own course and the quality of their own sessions, who would be best placed to make such a decision?
In the same article Stephenson argues the opposite; that students should be fully informed but then allowed to make their own choices, much the same as the view I have held at times during my career. Similarly to the last point above, he argues that many lectures on large courses in particular will likely be a rehash of textbook material, hence not very appealing to many students. Simple attendance is not something that should be rewarded, and students can make their own minds up about how to use their time in learning the material.
Similarly in the same article, Browne et al emphasise that class attendance is only valuable if these extend the textbook material and enhance critical thinking rather than regurgitate material that can be just as well consumed by reading the textbook (and now, with AI tutoring, YouTube videos etc.)
Finally, in defence of his suggestion for mandatory attendance, Romer argues that students will often not be rational in trading off a current cost for a long-term and ill-defined benefit, and therefore will make mistakes, mistakes that may be overcome in part by mandatory attendance (so it works like an external commitment device).
This point relies on a judgement that is outside of any empirical evidence. Do we treat university students as adults who are fundamentally different from school students, who can make their own choices with attendant consequences as long as the information we give them is accurate? Or do we think that adults or not, they still require guidance, rules and discipline in order to make better life choices1?
Modern Evidence
Williams et al (2012) look specifically at the impact of lecture capture videos on attendance, and from there, to performance. They find that those skipping class and relying only on recordings do markedly worse in assessments. In line with the previous discussion, this suggests that these lectures offer genuine value that is not fully captured by a recording. This can also be interpreted as in-line with Durden and Ellis’ result that it is very poor attendance that really affects performance, not slightly bad attendance. However like great many studies of this kind it is hard to prove causation, is it that attendance truly improves performance, or that high performers are likely to attend?
Lucey and Gradaki (2022) find some evidence that may shed light on this. They introduce an incentive scheme whereby students earn marks directly for attendance and for being prepared for classes. They find that this scheme does indeed significantly increase attendance (though the overall effect is not massive), but their most convincing econometric specification finds that the overall effect of the scheme on performance is negative. The authors seem reluctant to accept this, and have a variety of reasons specific to these courses that can explain the anomalous result. It might be plausible that the extra students who are induced to attend actually create a worse class environment, leading to worse performance for the good students who were going to attend anyway.2
Similarly Kapoor et al (2020) find that in a policy experiment where attendance is compelled, as per Romer’s suggestion, there is generally little impact on performance. In fact for some better students the impact on attendance is significantly positive but again the impact on performance is significantly negative. The authors interpret this (after checking carefully for a variety of other causes) as being due to the disruption of these students ‘study inputs’, in effect these students preferred to attend less but spend their time studying in other ways, and this suited them fine. Making them attend was actually a bad use of their time and led to underperformance.
What factors do students themselves say affect their attendance? Kelly (2012) helps answer this using survey data asking students about their habits. She finds that contrary to some previous literature, time and day do not matter other than that Fridays have lower attendance. Lecture quality is also a big issue, lectures that involve students in the class and have appropriate communication style may see higher attendance.
Does Attendance matter?
What to make of all this? Here is the answer from Perplexity:
Yes, attendance at university taught sessions does matter for final academic outcomes. Several studies have shown a positive correlation between higher attendance rates and better academic performance, including higher exam scores and overall course grades.
Some key findings on the importance of attendance include:
- Students who attended lectures regularly scored 10-15% higher on exams compared to those who did not attend.
- Data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) indicates that students who attend more than 90% of their classes tend to have higher course grades.[
- A study found a significant difference in final exam performance between students who attended classes regularly versus those who did not.
- One study showed a positive correlation coefficient between attendance and final grades when a mandatory attendance policy was implemented.
- Attending classes consistently is linked to better time management, enhanced participation, decreased dropout rates, and improved graduation rates.
While some exceptions exist, such as in self-paced learning or when high-quality online materials are available, the overall evidence suggests that regular attendance at university taught sessions is an important factor contributing to better academic outcomes and student success.3
There does seem to be a relationship between attendance and academic performance, but it is hard to ascertain how much of this is due to better students being more likely to attend, and how much it is due to students actually learning more. Slightly lower than average attendance may not matter very much, but very low attendance may be a greater problem, though baseline attendance figures never appear to be very high anyway.
Compulsory attendance may backfire in two ways. First by introducing unmotivated and disruptive students into the class who create a worse atmosphere, and secondly by forcing rather good students to attend class who may genuinely be better off studying independently. This effect will vary a lot depending on the quality of teaching, the type of material taught and the organisation of the rest of the course.
In answer to the question, does attendance matter? I answer yes, a little, for some students at least, and in some circumstances. Specifically I think attendance matters if (and only if) your taught session genuinely adds value for the students above any slides, recordings, reading, or other media you may use to teach this idea. Some students who are very disengaged, may also benefit from the discipline of being strongly incentivised to attend sessions. Overall the evidence suggests that attendance is not something that matters a lot however
We also know that many students are very focused on simply doing well in assessments, they are playing a signalling game to help their future career. Therefore sessions with material directly related to the assessments you have for your modules are going to be important, and attendance will help students do well. Tell your students an upcoming lecture has no relation to anything to do with the assessment and what do you expect to happen?
A final argument for attendance mattering, is that whilst many students may not innately care about the material you are teaching, you can inspire their interest if they are there, but you need to be sure that the quality is there to do that.
Action points
Think carefully about the value that your session adds. Are students genuinely getting something from this, and if not why are we urging them to attend? Consider going through my series on lectures for ideas on how to improve lecture sessions in particular (and there will be more to come on workshops and other ideas).
If you have designed sessions that have a strong social element, that will not work well for the students that do attend unless there are others there, then you may need to encourage attendance.
If you are incentivising students to attend that might not have otherwise, how will you make sure they add to the session rather than detract? You may need to talk to people individually or have other methods to make sure things run smoothly.
Your institution may have strong ways to encourage attendance already, but what can you do? In my experience, and as supported by Lucey and Gradaki (2022), the most effective way is to link attendance directly to assessment scores in some way. This could be via a portfolio where weekly work is completed and submitted in class, or an assessment component that requires a piece of homework or class contribution that makes up a percentage of the final mark. In my current module I am teaching the students have a group presentation and I have told them that non-attendance at workshops will mean they are removed from the group to do the work on their own. This has resulted in much higher than usual attendance.
We all like to think our students will benefit from our teaching, else what are we doing? Let’s make sure that really is true, happy teaching!
In the UK and elsewhere this is complicated by the legal/moral requirements of university entry. If students are granted a Visa to attend, this is conditional on attendance, and this requires monitoring. Similarly if fees have been paid by someone else (normally the government), there is an expectation of attendance in return for this support, which may raise legal questions, and if not, at least moral ones.
The authors do control for ability, but in a way I do not find wholly convincing.
Citations:
[1] https://publications.aston.ac.uk/id/eprint/40335/6/Determinants.pdf
[2] https://transkriptor.com/does-lecture-attendance-increase-academic-performance/
[3] https://repository.londonmet.ac.uk/226/
[4] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.11120/ened.2010.05010064
[5] https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1046&context=jutlp