School Attendance, Absenteeism and Withdrawal: A Sociological Analysis

In recent years, considerable interest in the phenomenon of absenteeism has been expressed by sociologists. Most of the work in this area has been confined to the industrial situation. In our present model-testing experiment, we wish to compare high school attendance with an industrial model.

The high school chosen to represent our model was the Mountain Grove Senior High School, Mountain Grove, Missouri. This particular school was chosen because of the availability of excellent records. The school records were of extreme significance as they represent the primary source of data used to construct our high school model. The only other source of data was lengthy, unstructured interviews with Ronald Compton, principal of the institution. Is is quite unfortunate that time and budget did not permit interview and testing of the subjects in social and psychological phases not covered by school records.