TICK_TOCK

A Study of Tardiness

Background research

When we searched tardiness rates +days of the week on the Google search engine, the closest thing to an experiment related to ours had to do with a group of females engaged in a Federal Work Program who were frequently tardy or late to meetings. All it discussed was the abstract of the case study, and not much information at all was given (http://www.haworthpress.com/store/ArticleAbstract.asp?sid=LGHE2E3JMLHN9MK86A3R2DVASBBEDSL3&ID=30095). The fifth link down under this search (http://educationcounts.edcentre.govt.nz/indicators/engagement/simu3.html) revealed a study in which school truancy was compared for gender, ethnicity, and school "decile". Overall, females had a slightly higher truancy rate than males, and the Maoris had the most truancies overall as an ethnic group. Under the search school tardiness on Google (http://blogsite.teenoptions.com/public/item/120643 ), some interesting information we found related to school absence was that a high school in Boston offered each of its students $25 cash if they had perfect attendance for a semester. In another Google search of school tardiness rates +days of the week, a link popped up for “Strategies For Dealing With Tardiness.” In this article, one example to reduce tardiness was in use at a California School, where students are fined $165 if they are late more than two times. It also stated that detentions, extra work, and grade impacts had no affect on tardiness rates. We then tried to search days of the week + school tardiness and still came up with the same results. Days of the Week + school tardiness +statistics only yielded results that had to do with college and high school class syllabuses for statistics classes, and their actions regarding tardiness. Days of the week+tardiness study also gave the same search results. When searching days of the week+ tardiness rates on Google, the only results that popped up were university and high school policies on tardiness. Switching search engines, MSN yielded almost identical results for Tardiness +days of the week, the only difference was it seemed to include more results that were personal websites or blogs. We returned back to Google because it seemed that this search engine offered more valid, usable data, and we tried a different approach on the search. We tried adding the words statistical study in, and after a search of high school tardiness rates +statistical study, we found a case study in which seven Minneapolis high schools changed their start times in the morning from 7:15 am to 8:40 am. This change in school start time resulted in less tardiness, less sleeping in class, and less overall absenteeism (http://www.education.umn.edu/carei/Reports/docs/SST-2002Bulletin.pdf). Melissa searched school tardiness on Yahoo! and she found a website containing someone’s research paper in Wisconsin. It contained a chart comparing the grade level and differences in tardiness, showing that juniors came in late most often closely followed by seniors (http://www.uwstout.edu/lib/thesis/2004/2004weadeb.pdf).

Overall, no research seems to have been done on our exact topic.