What are the most common reasons for absence?
In the spring of 2019, ABC Head Start* conducted a thorough review of program attendance with the goal of identifying patterns or trends in absenteeism and working to address issues that interfered with program attendance.
ABC Head Start used data visualization to enhance their analysis, something they had not done previously. The visualization uncovered a number of interesting patterns including the most common reasons for absenteeism.
(*ABC Head Start is a generic name we use when a program does not wish to be identified.)
Analysis
In order to do this analysis, ABC Head Start uploaded their attendance data to the DataSay software. The DataSay software converts the attendance data to a series of visualizations, including: (1) a graph of expected attendance vs. actual attendance by month; and (2) a pie chart displaying reasons for absence.
Chart 1 Expected vs. Actual Attendance and Reasons for Absence
The visualized data confirmed a long-held belief about absenteeism. The pie chart showing reason for absence showed administrators that the majority of absenteeism resulted from child/parent illness and appointments (the pink and yellow sections in Chart 1.)
To check on any patterns, ABC Head Start looked at the data for each individual month. Chart 2 (below left) shows January data specifically and Chart 3 (below right) shows March data specifically.
Chart 2 | Month of January selected for review
Chart 3 | Month of March selected for review
Result
By looking at the two pie charts, ABC Head Start could see that the reasons for absence were fairly consistently throughout the program year: The combination of child/parent illness and appointments accounted for the majority of absences. The data caused the program to dig deeper and ultimately decided to provide parents with assistance to get their children to school when they had appointments.
ABC Head Start will monitor the data over the next program year to see if their new approach of providing assistance to parents is working to reduce absenteeism.
Additional details
Audience: Leadership, management
Level of Analysis: Grantee
Difficulty: Moderate
Content Area: ERSEA
Data Sources: DataSay
Technical Appendix
Attendance data was uploaded to the DataSay software, which converts the attendance data to a series of visualizations in an attendance dashboard.