What is it about?
This paper focuses on the six university degrees taught at the School of Economy and Business of the University of Barcelona (Facultat d’Economia i Empresa de la Universitat de Barcelona). An “ad-hoc” questionnaire has been prepared and the opinions of 1,162 undergraduates have been analyzed. The reasons given by each population differ in hierarchy and motivations.
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Why is it important?
We consider an “absent student” as the one who, once he/she has registered for a course, does not attend classes regularly. This non-attendance may be due to, more or less voluntary, diverse reasons. If he/she does not attend because he/she prefers to stay at home studying or going to a school outside the university (private support lessons), or finding a tutor, or else dedicating time to leasure instead of going to class, for example, we understand this is voluntary absenteeism. On the contrary, if he/she does not attend classes because he/she is working at the same time or because two of his/her courses overlap, for instance, we consider it involuntary absenteeism.
Perspectives
Absenteeism is a current feature of all university classrooms. Up to now it was a phenomenon which had been rarely or not at all studied as an objective variable. The proposals that have been made have included it as a complement and always from the perspective of an indicator of academic performance.
Dr Xavier M Triado
University of Barcelona
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Empirical approach to the analysis of university student absenteeism: proposal of a questionnaire for students to evaluate the possible causes, Quality & Quantity, December 2011, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/s11135-011-9654-3.
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