Attitude of Undergraduate Medical Students towards Classroom Lecture Absenteeism and its Association with Academic Performance

Introduction: Classroom lecture absenteeism is a challenging issue among medical educators. The benefit of attending lecture classes on academic performance has already been documented. Very few studies have explored the attitude of undergraduate medical students towards classroom lecture absenteeism and its association with the students' academic performance. Aim: To explore undergraduate medical students' attitude towards classroom lecture absenteeism, its association (if any) with academic performance (measured by total marks obtained in semester marks) and also to evaluate the attitude of the students towards attending classroom lectures on pre and paraclinical subjects. Materials and Methods: This anonymous structured questionnaire based observational study was conducted in the Departments of Biochemistry and Pharmacology in the month of September 2021, of a tertiary care government medical college. Phase 1 (n=98) (batch 2021-22) and phase 2 (n=97) (batch 2020-2021) MBBS students of the government medical college were included. Descriptive statistics, Chi-square test and one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) tests were used to analyse the data. The p <= 0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: Out of the 195 students, (male: female ratio being 2:1) 94.87% stayed at hostel. Most of them (51.28%) agreed to attend the classroom lectures for pre and paraclinical subjects for getting attendance. It significantly affected the academic performance of the students (p=0.005). A 61.02% students wanted the lecture classes for pre and paraclinical subjects to be optional. Again 76.92% of them thought attending lecture classes have positive impact on their academic performance. The choice of opinion significantly (p<0.001) affected their academic performances. A 56.41% of the students agreed to skip lecture classes 2-3 times per week and cited the most common reason being "not liking the teaching of a particular teacher." The choice of the students significantly affected the academic performance (p<0.001). A 67.69% of them opined that by reducing the duration of the class, classroom lecture classes on pre and paraclinical subjects can be improved, and there was significant association between the choice and the academic performance of the students (p<0.001). Conclusion: Although majority of the students understand the positive impact of lecture classes on academic performances and don't want attending these lecture classes to become optional, they want certain modifications like making the traditional didactic lecture classes more interactive, exam oriented, and concept based. Also some of their attitudes (if not all) affected their academic performances significantly.