Attitude structure towards lecturer absenteeism among science students in Universiti Malaysia Sabah

• Main Author: Bong, Kat Hing
• Format: Academic Exercise
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: LB Theory and practice of education
• Online Access: https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/18529/1/Attitude%20structure%20towards%20lecturer.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/18529/

Absenteeism of students does happen although university believed that attendance is one of the important parts of higher education. Student tends to skip lectures and tutorials although attendance of student was taken. The objectives of the study are: a) to determine the attendance rate of student; b) to study the remedial actions of students if they absent in class and c) to investigate the attitude structure of student towards absenteeism. Data were collected using questionnaire from 418 Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) science students which included three faculties: a) Faculty of Science and Natural Resources; b) Faculty of Computing and Informatics; c) Faculty of Sustainable Agriculture. Sets of questionnaire which consisted demographic characteristic of student, statements about attitude of students towards absenteeism and remedy action that student most probably would take if they missed class. Reliability test was conducted on the attitude statements toward absenteeism. Factor analysis then applied to explore the factor structures of factor affecting student to attend their lecture. Besides that, Mann-Whitney test on attendance rate and gender were used to identify whether there exist mean difference between the independent variables. Mann-Whitney test also been used to test significant difference between factor score and gender. Kruskal-Wallis Test was used to test the Significance difference between attendance rate and years of study. Besides that, Kruskal-Wallis Test was also used to test the significance difference between factor score and years of study. In addition, correlation was applied to find out the relationship between factor scores and attendance rate. From the results, 6 factors were produced for student attitude structure towards absenteeism: inevitable event (factor 1), private commitment (factor 2), personal interest (factor 3), time factor (factor 4), subject material (factor 5) and travel case (factor 5). Factor scores for each factor were obtained using Anderson-Rubin method. The result indicated that there were Significant mean differences between lecture attendance rate and years of study. For the nonparametric correlation test, negative relationship (r=-0.230) existed between number of lectures attended by student and time factor with p-value of 0.000<0.001. Travel case and lecture attendance rate showed positive relationship (r=0.203) which have the p-value of 0.000<0.001.