“Good attendance at university is an out-dated ideal”: the views of staff and students.

By
Dr Ann Walker
This paper reports on the second stage of an attendance monitoring project in which academic staff and students identified as good, average and poor attendees contributed to focus group discussions. In total ten focus groups were held, with thematic analysis identifying the key themes of motivators for attending, motivators against attending, assessment considerations, attendance and marks, reward versus punishment, student autonomy, purpose of attendance monitoring, and problems with monitoring attendance. The findings are discussed in relation to Social Exchange Theory and Social Learning Theory.

Introduction
This is the second report on a first year attendance monitoring project which is being carried out at the university where I work. In our first paper, we reported that we had found a significant correlation between absence and marks with students with poorer attendance records receiving lower end-of-semester marks. We also found that the poorer attenders were more likely to withdraw, either temporary or permanently, from the course. This finding is in keeping with those of similar studies going back over 50 years (for summary see Richie & Hargrove 2004/05).

Two psychological theories, Social Exchange Theory and Social Learning Theory, have been put forward as explanations for the relationship between absence and marks. Social Exchange Theory proposes that students who perceive an unequal balance between the effort which they put into their work and the compensation which they receive are more likely to disengage (Chadwick-Jones, Brown, & Nicholson, 1973), whilst Social Learning Theory proposes that a student’s rate of absenteeism is due to the level of importance which he or she puts on a grade and their expectation of achieving that