This Campbell systematic review examines the effect of interventions on school attendance to inform policy, practice and research. The review summarise findings from 28 studies conducted in the US, Canada, UK and Australia.
Overall, truancy intervention programs are effective. There is a significant overall positive and moderate mean effect of intervention on attendance, which increases attendance by 4.7 days per student by the end of the intervention. Studies did not measure longer‐term outcomes, so we do not know if these gains in attendance continue after the intervention ends.
There was no significant difference in the effectiveness of different delivery channels (e.g. school, court or community‐based), different modalities (e.g., individual, family, group, or multimodal), or different lengths of time (e.g., one day versus a school year). Contrary to popular belief and recommendations for best practices in truancy reduction found in the existing literature, collaborative programs and multimodal interventions do not produce greater effects on attendance than other types of programs. However, small sample sizes and substantial variation between studies suggest caution is needed in interpreting and applying these findings. There are shortcomings in the literature, notably the lack of inclusion of minority students.
Executive summary/Abstract
BACKGROUNDTruancy is a significant problem in the U.S. and in other countries around the world. Truancy has been linked to serious immediate and far‐reaching consequences for youth, families, and schools and communities, leading researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to try to understand and to address the problem. Although numerous and significant steps have been taken at the local, state, and national levels to reduce truancy, the rates of truancy have at best remained stable or at worst been on the rise, depending on the indicator utilized to assess truancy rates.The costs and impact of chronic truancy are significant, with both short‐ and long‐term implications for the truant youth as well as for the family, school, and community. Although several narrative reviews and one meta‐analysis of attendance and truancy interventions have attempted to summarize the extant research, there are a number of limitations to these reviews. It is imperative that we systematically synthesize and examine the evidence base to provide a comprehensive picture of interventions that are being utilized to intervene with chronic truants, to identify interventions that are effective and ineffective, and to identify gaps and areas in which more research needs to be conducted to better inform practice and policy.
OBJECTIVESThe main objective of this systematic review was to examine the effects of interventions on school attendance to inform policy, practice, and research. The questions guiding this study were:
1) Do truancy programs with a goal of increasing student attendance for truant youth affect school attendance behaviors of elementary and secondary students with chronic attendance pr...
