To attend or not to attend: is that a good question?

The effect of attending class in a General Psychology course was examined. We compared the students who were present on days in which unannounced quizzes were given with those students who were not present. For two of the three quizzes, being present on a quiz day significantly increased subsequent test scores over the material. In addition, there was a significant effect of attendance on overall test scores in the class. The students who were present for all three quizzes had significantly higher overall test scores than other students. The current study demonstrates the importance of attendance on both immediate test scores and overall test scores. Even in the era where students can gain immediate access to course information, student attendance remains essential for success in a course.

When one of the researchers was a student. he received the best piece of advise from one of his collegiate professors. Dr. Dallinger (personal communication, October, 1995) told him that, "The worst thing to do in a class, is to not come to class." As an instructor now, this researcher passes this advice onto his current students, but the question remains of whether, this is the best piece of advice. One wonders what the effect of attending class, or its corollary class attendance, has on test grades in a class.

The question of whether or not class attendance has an effect on course grades is one that has been asked for decades. L. Jones (1931) investigated this question in the 1930s and found a relationship between classroom attendance and grade point average. He found that the fewer absences a student had during the semester, the higher the student's grade point average. Since Jones's study, a multitude of research studies have also found that class absence is negatively associated with overall course grades (Anikeeff, 1954; Brocato, 1989; Brown, Graham, Money, & Rakoczy, 1999; Buckalew, Daly, & Coffield, 1986: Caffrey & Klugh, 1971; Gunn, 1993; Gussett, 1976: Rose, Hall, Bolen, & Webster, 1996: Schuman, Walsh.Olson, & Etheridge.1985; Street, 1975; Van Blerkom, 1992; Vidler. 1980), overall grade point average (Rose et al., 1996; Schuman et al., 1985), and tests (C. H. Jones, 1984: Schimoff & Catania, 2001). Furthermore, the correlation between class absences and course grades accounted for a large portion of the variance in course grades in many of the studies, ranging from .36 to .92 (Anikeef, 1954: Brocato, 1989; Gunn, 1993: Street, 1975).

One question that arises from the negative relationship between absences and course grades is whether lower grades are a result of increased class absences, or conversely, whether lower class grades lead to increased class absences. C. H. Jones (1984) in his study found support for both causal models. In his opinion what occurs is a downward spiral: as a student misses class the student does poorer, which consequently, results in more absences, and as a student does poorly, the student misses more classes, which results in further poorer performance. The current study attempted to test the contention that class attendance leads to better performance.

We expected that those students who were in class on one of the three quiz days would have significantly higher scores on the next test that followed the quiz than those students who were not in class on the quiz day. We also expected that attendance on more quiz days would lead to significantly higher overall test scores in the course.

Methods

Participants

The participants for the current study were 423 undergraduate students enrolled in one of the two General Psychology sections taught by one of the authors at a western university. Of these 423 undergraduate students, 317 students (7494%) completed the first unannounced quiz. Two hundred six-two students (61.94%) completed the second unannounced quiz, and 261 students (61.70%) completed the third unannounced quiz.

Procedures

The classes were large lecture sections of general psychology that met three times per week for 50 min.

The six unit tests were composed of 25 multiple-choice questions that tested the students' understanding of the course material that was presented in class or in the Tavris and Wade (2001) textbook. While the students had the opportunity to take all six unit tests, they were informed at the beginning of the semester that their five highest test grades would be counted toward their final grades. More specifically, the student's lowest grade was dropped when their final grade for the course was determined.

The students were initially told in class, and in their syllabi, that there were would be three unannounced quizzes throughout the semester. Each quiz consisted of one question which was taken directly from the information discussed in class that day, and was available in their textbook, or was related to the course, and was available in their syllabi. A student who answered the question correctly on the quiz received a total of 4 points. The grades on the three unannounced quizzes were structured in a manner similar to the unit test grades. Although three unannounced quizzes were utilized throughout the semester, the students were informed that only their two highest scores on the three quizzes would be used to determine their final course grades.

Results

The following results are based on data from the students who were not only present and took the quizzes on the days in which they occurred, but also the different unit tests. As part of the requirements of the course, the students were not required to take every unit test or every quiz, as a result of this, a student's lowest unit test score and lowest quiz score were dropped in determination of his/her final course grades, which caused the differences in the number of students for the statistical tests.

Comparison between Classes

We investigated whether the two sections significantly differed on the number of students who took each of the three unannounced quizzes. The proportions of students that were present and took each of the three quizzes in the two sections of the course were not different. This was evidenced by the non-significant chi-squared statistics for each of the quizzes, for Quiz I , X = , (1, N = 423) = 0.28, n.s., for Quiz 2. x = (1, N = 423) = 0.16, n.s., and for Quiz 3, x = (1 , N = 423) = 2.57, n.s. Consequently, the data were collapsed for the subsequent analyzes.

Comparisons on Unit Tests following the Quizzes

Being present for quiz 1 (M = 17.94. SD = 3.62) did not significantly increase, F (1 , 409) = 1.71, n.s., a student's score on the following test compared to a student who did not take the quiz (M = 17.40, SD = 3.49). For the test that followed quiz 2, the students who were present (M = 18.03, SD = 3.42) on the day quiz 2 was given in class had significantly higher average test scores, F (1, 411) = 7.79, p <.0 1, than those students who were not present (M = 17.05, SD = 3.55). The students who were present for quiz 3 (M = 19.68, SD = 3.40) scored significantly better on average, F (1, 396) = 24.31, p <.001, on the following test than did the students who did not take the quiz (M = 17.78, SD = 4,14).

Comparisons on Overall Test Scores

We also investigated the cumulative influence of attendance on test scores in the class by comparing the students who did not take any of the quizzes, with those that took one quiz, with those that took two of the three quizzes, and with those students who took all of the quizzes (see Table I for means and standard deviations).

Significant differences existed between the groups. F(3,419) = 11.04,p<.001, with the group who took three quizzes having significantly higher test scores than the group who took two quizzes, t (419) = +3.10,p < .01, the group who took one quiz, t (419) = +4.46, p < .001, and the group who did not take any of the quizzes, t (419) = +4.63, p < .001 (this is equal to an increase of 8% on overall test scores). In addition, the group who took two quizzes had significantly higher overall test scores than the group who did not take any quizzes, t(419) = +2.35,p<.05.

Discussion

We began the study with the question about the importance of attending class. We found that attending class significantly increased the number of correct answers on an unit test over the material and on overall test scores, which appears to support this notion that attending class is very influential on a student's grade. Our results correspond with the previous research (Anikeeff, 1954; Brocato, 1989: Brown et al., 1999; Buckalew et al., 1986; Caffrey & Klugh, 1971; Gunn, 1993; Gussett, 1976: C. H. Jones, 1984: L. Jones, 1931. Rose et al., 1996; Schuman et al., 1985; Shimoff & Catania, 2001: Street, 1975; Van Blerkom, 1992; Vidler, 1980) that found that attending class affected student grades.

One interesting aspect of the current study was our specific comparison between the scores of students who attended class with those who did not attend. C. H. Jones (1984) examined the correlation between attendance before an exam and the student's score on the next exam, and he found that there were significant negative correlations between exam scores and absences before the exam. Our study was an attempt to demonstrate that attendance by itself had a strong influence on grades in a course, but this influence was not only a cumulative effect that took place over time by lowering a student's overall grade, but also a more immediate effect, in which it lowers a student's grade on a test that occurs in the near future. This effect can be observed in our findings for Quiz 2 and Quiz 3. These quizzes occurred during the meeting times for the units that occur near the middle to early end of the course, and the students who were present for those quizzes had significantly higher scores on the unit tests. Consequently, by synthesizing the findings from our study and the findings from C. H. Jones' study, instructors can inform their students about the importance of attending class on immediate course grades, and not just the final course grades.

In higher education there has been a recent push to incorporate the internet in courses, with instructors being encouraged to post their lecture notes and/or powerpoint files online (Brent, 1999). This enables students access to the information from class even when they were unable to attend. whether this is for a reason considered acceptable by both faculty and students such as, "I had to attend the funeral of a relative," or for a reason considered unacceptable by students and faculty, such as "I ran out of groceries" (Sleigh, Ritzer, & Casey, 2002, p. 55). However, the current study and previous research continue to indicate the effect of attending class on grades in the course with more attendances increasing overall test scores by adding nearly a full letter grade. Consequently, it is important for faculty to include contingencies in their courses to ensure that students attend because attendance increases grades and these contingencies increase attendance in a course (Baum & Youngblood, 1975; Hancock, 1994; Hansen, 1990; Hovel], Williams, & Semb, 1979; Lloyd et al., 1972: Shimoff & Catania, 2001), even when students indicate that a record of attendance has no influence on their attendance (Shimoff & Catania, 2001).

One possible limitation of the current study relates to the fact that Graham (1999) found that quizzing students on material that would be covered on the next test led to higher scores on that test. However, the quizzes in the current study were constructed as a means to determine the attendance of students in the course, and not as a strong measure of their comprehension. As a result, all of the students correctly answered each quiz question. In addition to ensure students would not have difficulty with the quizzes, the students were allowed to use their notes and textbooks to answer the quiz questions which were related to material that had been covered during that lecture or related to the course in general.

Another possible limitation of the current study is the definition of attendance that we utilized. It is possible that a better measure of attendance in the course would have been to have all of the students who were in class on the day of the quiz write down their names on a separate sheet of paper in addition to taking the quiz; however, we feel that our method was satisfactory and extremely useful. First, the percentage of students who took the quizzes was high overall (all above 60%) and this was especially true for the first quiz. Second, the students responded to the quiz questions on sheets we provided them and the difference in the number of sheets distributed and the number of sheets available equaled the number of students in the class. Consequently, when the sheets were distributed each individual was given one and only one sheet. Third, since the quizzes were considered part of the course grade and the students were not informed that it would be used by the instructor to gain an idea of an overall attendance, the students had no reason to expect that their attendance was being measured, and as such, they should try to include quizzes for their friends who were not in attendance. A final reason we feel that our method was satisfactory and extremely useful is the length of the quizzes. Since the quizzes were extremely short in nature, we were able to collect the data from the students about attendance without devoting a large portion of the class to taking attendance.

Returning again to our original question, we can safely state that attending class is one of the best things students can do with regard to their grades. This is the case for both the immediate future and for the entire course.

Table 1

Means and Standard Deviations for Overall Tests for the Groups Based on Number of Quizzes Taken ==

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Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dr. Michael A. Clump, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Boise State University, 1910 University Drive. Boise, ID 83725-1715. Email: [e-mail].

Michael A. Clump, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychology, Boise State University. Heather Bauer and Alex Whiteleather. Students at Boise State University.