Original scientific paper

Psychosocial determinants of absenteeism

Marina Markuš ; Nacionalni centar za vanjsko vrednovanje obrazovanja, PISA centar

Abstract

This study was conducted with a view to analysing absenteeism according to gender, school performance, the level of the mother’s education, and the personal perception of incompetence, with special emphasis on the students’ attitude to absenteeism. The assumption was that girls, students who perform better at school, students of mothers with a higher level of education, and students who perceived themselves as more competent would be absent less frequently, and would have fewer unjustified absences. Out of the listed variables, only school performance was significantly negatively related to the number of absences, especially unjustified ones. Discriminative analysis shows that it may be predicted on the basis of school performance which students will have unjustified absences. An analysis of students’ views on absences showed that students are most frequently absent out of fear of examinations or receiving bad
grades, or because they are overloaded with learning material. They see an opportunity for reducing absenteeism in improving the quality of teaching and in making it more interesting, and in reducing the quantity of learning material and the frequency of examinations.

Keywords

Mother’s education; personal perception of incompetence; absenteeism; school performance

Hrčak ID:

82797

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/82797

Publication date:

15.4.2009.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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