Am I Missing Something? The Effects of Absence from Class on Student Performance

Wiji Arulampalam, Robin Naylor () and Jeremy Smith

No 3749, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We exploit a rich administrative panel data-set for cohorts of Economics students at a UK university in order to identify causal effects of class absence on student performance. We utilise the panel properties of the data to control for unobserved heterogeneity across students and hence for endogeneity between absence and academic performance of students stemming from the likely influence of unobserved effort and ability on both absence and performance. Our estimations also exploit features of the data such as the random assignment of students to classes and information on the timetable of classes, which yield potential instruments in our identification strategy. Among other results, we find that there is a causal effect of absence on performance for students: missing class leads to poorer performance. There is evidence from a quantile regression specification that this is particularly true for better-performing students, consistent with our hypothesis that effects of absence on performance are likely to vary with factors such as student ability.

Keywords: education; panel data; selection correction; quantile regression; class absence; randomised experiments; student performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C41 I2 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2008-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - revised version publishd in: Economics of Education Review, 2012, 31 (4), 363-375

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Related works:
Journal Article: Am I missing something? The effects of absence from class on student performance (2012)
Working Paper: Am I missing something? The effects of absence from class on student performance (2007)
Working Paper: Am I missing something? The effects of absence from class on student performance (2007)
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