Study: Athletic participation boosts attendance behavior

A recently released study by the Washington-based think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI) suggests that structured, voluntary extracurricular participation — namely varsity athletics — can meaningfully improve attendance behavior.

The study, “An Extra Point for Attendance: The Impact of High School Varsity Athletics on Absenteeism,” analyzed data for 262,000 high school students in Indiana during the 2023-24 school year and found that, after accounting for various student and school characteristics, varsity athletes have “substantially better” attendance than their peers across the entire school year, with participation promoting still better attendance during an athlete’s respective sports season.

The report’s authors describe a “double bump” in absence rates.

“Not only do varsity athletes have lower annual absence rates—especially for unexcused absences—than non-athletes, but their absence rates fall further when their sport is in season,” the report says. “This in-season difference is relatively modest if we look across all sports, in part because many sports — such as baseball and softball — are played during the spring, when absence rates tend to rise for all students, partly offsetting any effect of sports.”

Across all sports, the report shows varsity athletes absence rate is 0.97 percentage points lower out of season, what they call “the athlete effect,” and an additional 0.88 points lower in season, dubbed the “in-season effect.”

Because the researchers were unable to account for junior varsity and other non-varsity athletes, they suggest the attendance advantage is likely an underestimate.

They also studied the effects among male and female varsity athletes, noting the athlete and in-season effects are larger for females than males, 0.77 and 0.81 percentage points, respectively.

Overall, the study concludes that varsity sports participation is strongly associated with better student attendance, arguing that varsity sports participation actually promotes better attendance. Over the course of the school year, athletes’ absence rate was 1.37 points lower than non-athletes’ rate, a reduction of nearly 20 percent, according to the study.

“When we control for a number of factors that we know matter for both sports participation and attendance, we continue to find that varsity athletes are absent less often than their peers across the entire year and, further, that their attendance improves even more during their sports seasons,” the report says, adding that, while difficult to explain, the effects must somewhat be attributed to varsity sports participation itself.

“Indeed, while the athlete effect could be explained by factors beyond achievement, race and the other variables we control for, the in-season effect is harder to dismiss. It is almost certain that athletes’ improved attendance during their sports seasons is predominantly caused by their active sports participation.”

The full report can be found here.