Arulampalam, Wiji, Naylor, Robin and Smith, Jeremy (2007) Am I missing something? The effects of absence from class on student performance. Working Paper. Coventry: University of Warwick, Department of Economics. Warwick economic research papers (No.820).

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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 exploit the panel properties of the data to control for unobserved heterogeneity across students and hence for endogeneity between class absence and academic performance of students stemming from the likely influence of 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 provides potential instruments in our identification strategy. Among other results we find, from a quantile regression specification, that there is a causal effect of absence on performance for students: missing class leads to poorer performance. There is evidence 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.

Item Type:	Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory L Education > L Education (General)
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Panel analysis, Regression analysis -- Mathematical models, Academic achievement, School attendance
Series Name:	Warwick economic research papers
Publisher:	University of Warwick, Department of Economics
Place of Publication:	Coventry
Official Date:	November 2007
Dates:	Date Event November 2007 Published
Number:	No.820
Number of Pages:	38
Institution:	University of Warwick
Status:	Not Peer Reviewed
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access (Creative Commons)
Version or Related Resource:	Revised as: Arulampalam, W., Naylor, R. and Smith, J.P. (2009). Am I missing something? The effects of absence from class on student performance. [Bonn, Germany] : IZA. (IZA Discussion Paper no. 3749).

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