Caribbean Medical Journal (Mar 2022)
Does an Attendance-Credit Increase Medical Students’ Attendance in In-class Lectures and Performance in Pharmacology and What is the Correlation Between Class Attendance and Performance on Pharmacology Exams?
Abstract
ABSTRACT Objectives This study aimed to find out the effect of an attendance-credit on class attendance and performance on Pharmacology exams, and analyze a correlation between class attendance and performance on Pharmacology exams. Methods A total of 182 students from a period of two years, January 2017 to December 2018, were enrolled in the study. Ethical clearance was obtained from the institutional review board. Attendance of the first group of students was credited whereas the attendance of the second group of students was not credited. Lecture materials were made available and downloadable to the students from the beginning of the semester until the end of final exams, irrespective of their class attendance. Assessment items were single response multiple-choice questions built around clinical vignettes. Pearson correlation and Chi-Square (χ2) tests were used as tests of significance. The level of significance was considered at P-value ≤0.05. Results Eighty seven percent (87%) of students attended more than 70% of lectures when class attendance was credited whereas only 44% of students attended more than 70% of lectures when the attendance was not credited. The average of ‘credited class attendance’ was 87% vs 61% for ‘non-credited class attendance’ (P<0.001). The correlation between academic score and ‘credited class attendance’ was significant (r= 0.240, df= 90, r for df 90 at P=0.05 is 0.205), and the correlation between academic score and ‘non-credited class attendance’ was stronger (r= 0.368, df= 88, r for df 80 at P=0.01 is 0.283) than for credited attendance. Conclusion Provided that lecture materials are available and downloadable from the beginning until the end of the semester to the medical students, an attendance-credit, an external motivation, increased the class attendance significantly in the lectures. However, it did not increase the performance on Pharmacology exams accordingly. The class attendance had a significantly positive correlation with the performance on Pharmacology exams. So, present study concludes that students who attend the lectures irrespective of the external motivation perform significantly higher on the exams, and it has a strong positive linear correlation.
