Sarah Patterson (2000)

This research project focused on the correlation between students skipping class, their level of state-trait anxiety, and their sensitivity towards anxiety. There are various times when certain students might skip class. These times can include when students are tired, when they are bored, or when they did not complete their homework. Particular students may also skip when they are anxious about something connected to the classroom. Corville-Smith, Ryan, Adams & Dalicandro (1998) found that there was no statistically significant relationship between absentee students and anxiety, even though a trend was observed with absentee students having a higher self-reported anxiety compared to regular attending students. For this project the main objective was to focus on this relationship between voluntary absenteeism and a student’s self-reported anxiety.

It was predicted that students with generally high state anxiety and trait anxiety would be more likely to voluntarily skip class compared with students who had lower levels of state-trait anxiety. Second, I hypothesized that students who did not skip classes were more likely to have higher levels of anxiety sensitivity compared to students who did skip.

Thirty-nine female college students from Sweet Briar College filled out three questionnaires. These consisted of a Absenteeism Questionnaire that looked at reasons why student skip; Reiss and Peterson’s (1986) Anxiety Sensitivity Index that looked at the fear of anxiety; and Spielberger’s (1983) State-Trait Anxiety Inventory that compares momentary, state anxiety to a person’s characteristic, trait anxiety. The participants were separated into skippers or non-skippers. Skippers were the participants who self-reported that they had skipped for one of the reason given on the Absenteeism Questionnaire. Non-skippers were those who said they had never skipped.

The results from unpaired t-tests on the three anxiety measures did not show any statistical significance, however, a trend in the mean values was observed. Skippers seemed to have overall higher State Anxiety, Trait Anxiety and Anxiety Sensitivity levels compared to the non-skippers. The results of this correlational study do not support the researcher’s hypotheses, however, the results of this study correspond with the findings of the correlational study done by Corville-Smith, Ryan, Adams & Dalicandro (1998). They found that that there was not a statistically significant relationship between absentee students and anxiety, even though a trend could be observed from the data. This trend seemed to show that absentee students had a higher self-reported anxiety compared to the other students, which would fit with the results from this research study.