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Attendance and performance: correlations and motives in lecture-based modules

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>2011
<mark>Journal</mark>Journal of Geography in Higher Education
Issue number2
Volume35
Number of pages17
Pages (from-to)199-215
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Does attending lectures improve student performance? Using novel attendance data, we examine statistically the relationships between attendance and performance for first-year and third-year students. The relationship is moderately positive: very high attendance is significantly associated with an improvement in performance over very low attenders of between 5.3% and 12.8%, depending on circumstances. Then we provide qualitative evidence from in-depth interviews with students about their views and motives regarding lectures. We find a range of reasons why attendance may be less than complete, and conclude that attendance is related to performance in complex ways.