Janet M Liles

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Background: Achieving academic success in a college environment invokes different meanings among faculty, administrators, and students. Within this study, academic success is defined as adherence to the college’s established attendance policy and didactic grades equal to 2.0 (70%) or above on a 4-point scale. The impact of attendance on academic success is observed through an examination of motivation in a cohort of high school seniors concurrently enrolled in an allied health program

Objective: To determine the correlation, if any, of attendance on final grades in a cohort of high school seniors concurrently enrolled in an allied health program. An analysis of motivation was included to give perspective to the behavior of students in this program.

Methods: Grades and attendance for each student were recorded and analyzed using the correlation analysis tool within Microsoft Excel. High school students concurrently enrolled in an allied health program were given the Academic Motivation Scale (AMS), benchmarking motivation, during the initial class meeting of the 2009-2010 academic year to further understand students’ behavior. Data from the AMS were collected and analyzed by members of the institutional research group at the participating university, using Microsoft Excel.

Results: During the 2009-2010 academic year, the mean rate of absence for the cohort was 4.55 and the mean grade point average was 2.17. The Pearson r correlation between absences and grades was –0.80 and the coefficient of determination was 0.64. Students within this cohort were academically successful, achieving grade point averages of 2.0 and above. The highest marks on the AMS were in the categories of Identified Regulation (knowing that outcomes are under your control and are determined by hard work, personal attributes, and good decisions) and External Regulation (understanding that outcomes are outside of your control and are independent of hard work and good decisions). This cohort ranked the category Amotivation lowest

CONCLUSIONS: Motivation appears to have supported academic success in this group of students. However, the attrition rate and small sample size in this study do not yield rich data that may be generally applied to high school students concurrently enrolled in an allied health program.

J Pharm Technol 2011;27:178-82.