There appears to have been little research about why students do or do not attend
lectures. A study at Lincoln University in 1992 (Fleming, 1992) found the major
reasons given by students for non-attendance at lectures were: competing assessment
pressures (24% of reasons given), poor lecturing (23%), timing of the lecture (16%) and
poor quality of the lecture content (9%). Students, Fleming surmised, may choose to
miss a class in order to work on an assignment because they think they will gain more
(marks) from doing the assignment. A 1995 replicating study at Lincoln University
(Fleming, 1995) found that 40% of the reasons offered for non-attendance at lectures
were “the pressure of other learning tasks”. No comment was made on the absence of
any significant reference to poor lecturing and/or lecture content compared to the earlier
survey.