Tardiness Survey.docx

Survey on the Tardiness of UP, Diliman undergraduates

Tardiness Survey

A survey on the behaviors, preferences, and opinions in terms of tardiness of UP, Diliman undergraduates

Blas, Lanz Eric Filoteo University of the Philippines, Diliman

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Introduction

I chose this topic because I personally get annoyed at people that get late. I live in Pasig right at the borders of Cainta, Rizal but due to the heavier traffic nowadays I’m already considered “far” from everything else like to UP Diliman. It’s only 20 kilometers away but takes an hour to an hour and a half

for me to get to my class. And still given how far I am from UP, I still manage to on time and rarely coming to class late. The probably only reason why I get late is because traffic suddenly becomes heavier like when major car accidents happen in certain major roads in Metro Manila such as on C5 or on Katipunan which makes my travel from an hour to two hours. It simply bothers me why c ertain people, sometimes my friends, sometimes my groupmates in some of my classes often arrive late even if they leave within Quezon City. Some even live only 10-15 minutes away from UP and they still arrive late. This made me curious how tardiness is seen by other students if they have the same opinions as me, and if certain behaviors and opinions on tardiness are gender specific or age specific. In Farar’s (2010) dissertation about the tardiness of middle school students, Too Late to Learn,

tardiness in a school setting is defined as missing school for a part of the day as opposed to truancy which means missing school at all. It was said that t ardiness could lead to a bigger risk for academic failure and could lead to affect the whole educational system and society. As cited in Farar’s study, Re id (2002) stated that curriculum demands, poor teaching, unsatisfactory student-teacher relationships, peer group relationships, social demands, emotional difficulties, and nutrition are the major factors that might cause a student to miss part or all his classes for the day. He also said that tardiness is a “major concern that school systems across the country are dealing with.”

In the context of the Philippines, the concept of filipino time may be familiar to most if not all filipinos. According to Miguel A. Bernad (2002), the phr ase “filipino time” was coined by annoyed Americans that noticed that filipinos often have the inability to meet at the scheduled time. Based from personal experiences with meetings, family gettogethers, events, and other activities, there will always be a person that will be late and this is based from the concept of filipino time. This survey is an attempt to discover the different behaviors, opinions, and preferences of UP Diliman students in the context of tardiness. Participants

The sample of participants consists of 41 undergraduate students from UP, Diliman with ages ranging from 19 to 29 with an average age of 20.07 (M = 20.07). Within the 41 undergraduate students,


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22 are male and 19 are female. The sample consists of 22 Psychology majors, 17 Engineering majors, 2 BA majors, 2 Sociology majors, an Anthropology major, a Biology major, an Economics major, a Geography major, a History major, an MBB major, a Philo major, and a Physics major. The sample was obtained using convenience sampling by asking people at the Lagmay Hall lobby if the y were available to answer a quick 7 question survey. Questionnaire

The physical questionnaire used in the survey asked the personal information of the participant such as their name, age, and course, it also consisted of a t otal of 7 questions. Five of which are simple yes or no questions concerning their behaviors and opinions about tardiness such as whether one is fearful of being late, if one t hinks another should be punished if he is late, if the 15-minute grace period is too short, if one intentionally went to class late, and if one made someone else sign his name on the attendance sheet. The sixth question is about approximation concerning the perce ntage of how often one gets late in a semester or within 90 school days. And the last question contains a list of possible reasons for one being late, and is simply asking which among the given reasons does one use as t he reason for being late. Check [Appendix I] for the sample questionnaire. Results

Conducting a frequency analysis and descriptive analysis on the data collected from o ur sample provided the following results. Question Question 1. I fear being late in class Question 2. I think late students should be punished Question 3. The 15-minute grace period is too short Question 4. I have been late to class intentionally Question 5. I have made someone sign my name on the attendance sheet Figure 1.1 Result of Yes and No Questions Question

Yes f 25 10

No f 16 31

Yes % 61% 24%

No % 39% 76%

10

31

24%

76%

29

12

71%

29%

13

28

32%

68%

Mean Tardiness Approximation I get late approximately ____ of the sem 14.85% Figure 1.2 Result of Tardiness Approximation Question----------


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To summarize the general results of t he survey, UP students are generally more fearful than not in terms arriving late to class. Majority believe that there is no need for punishment for tardy students. Majority also believe that 15 minutes already enough for anyone to arrive to class in tame. At least 70% of the whole population has arrived late to class intentionally and at least 32% of the whole population made someone else sign their name on the attendance sheet. It was also found that UP students on average arrive late in ~15% of their classes in one semester [M = 0.1485] which is around 13 or 1 4 times in a semester of 90 school days. Reason for being late Traffic Previous class extended Lenient Prof Friends Prof is always late Lunch Organization Activities Oversleeping Class is far Negligence Self-Issues Preference

Number of times selected 25 22 18 16 14 12 11 2 1 1 1 1

Figure 1.3 Result of reasons for being late It was also observed that the tardiness of UP students is greatly influenced by the tr affic of Metro Manila and by the professors of their classes with Traffic being mentioned ~61% in the survey, Extension of previous class at ~54% and Leniency of P rof at ~44%. According to the results, oversleeping, distance of the next class, negligence, self-issues, and preference all fall under the le ast used reasons for tardiness with less than 5% of the UP population affected by these reasons. However, looking at our data we can still further analyze it for more results. Conducting a Pearson Correlation analysis on gender and the 5 yes or no questions it was seen that there are significant relationships between Gender and being fearful in terms of tardiness [r = 0.443, p < 0.05] and between Gender and Making someone sign your name in the attendance sheet [r = -0.423, p < 0.05]. Performing crosstabs on gender and fear fulness in terms of tardiness, and gender and making someone else sign confirms that there are significant correlations.


I fear being late in class

Male

Female

No

13

3

Yes

9

16

5

Figure 1.4 Crosstab on gender and fe arfulness in terms of tardiness Someone sign attendance sheet

Male

Fame

No

11

17

Yes

11

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Figure 1.5 Crosstab on gender and Someone sign attendance sheet Males are less fearful than females in terms o f arriving to class late and males are more likely to have someone sign their name on the attendance sheet. There were no significant relationships between the remaining pairing of the 6 variables. Conducting a Univariate test on Gender and Tardiness Approximation, it was seen that Males do not significantly differ to Females in terms of t ardiness approximation [F = 0.827, p > 0.05]. Also conducting a univariate test on Age and Approximation while considering students with ages 23 and 29 as out-liars due to the lack of sample, it was seen that students with ages of 21 are significantly higher in terms of Tardiness Approximation [ F = 6.940, p < 0.05] then any o f the age in the sample.

Figure 1.6 Age and Tardiness Approximation Graph


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Discussion

Generally UP Diliman students are fearful of arriving to c lass late. This can be attributed to the highly diverse kinds of professors that UP Diliman houses. One couldn’t be too sure to what extent a professor could do to tardy students. For example, certain GE classes would have professors lock their doors after the given 15-minute grace period. Some professors would even schedule their quizzes at the start of each session while preventing late comers from taking the quiz or making up for their quiz, eventually resulting to tardy students receiving a ze ro for the day’s quiz. A professor can even begin

ignoring the questions of students who are always tardy and simply mark them as absent. UP students not only fear being late to class but they also fear the effe cts of their tardiness which include their personal image to their professor and their academic performance in each class. These students are generally fearful of tardiness but majority do not see the need for tardy students to be punished with the methods that we re previously mentioned. This is because majority of these students may feel sympathy towards tardy students most especially if these students do have valid reason for their late coming but is still punished by the professor. As an example, an observer m ay feel bad for a student who came in late because of a car accident but still gets a zero for the day’s quiz. According to majority of UP Diliman students, the given 15-minute grace period at the st art and at the end of each class is already enough for one to t ravel from one part of the campus to the other. This is highly attributed to the fact that UP Diliman is known to have multiple Jeeps within campus with five different routes, IKOT, TOKI, Philcoa, SM North, and Katipunan to make it easy for everyone to travel around campus. Given that these jee ps make it an ease to travel around campus, 15 minutes is more than enough for students to reach their next classrooms from their previous classrooms. Given that some students may have strong bonds with their friends and org-mates most especially during college, one may think that not m issing out is worth missing a few minutes of missed lectures. Organization activities such as org application processes and cert ain university-wide activities and celebration such as the well-known Engineering Wee k may also coincide with the schedule of the classes of multiple UP Diliman students. This intentionally being late behavior can also be attributed to a student’s lunch. Knowing that food is a physiological need, one may prioritize getting lunch over arriving

early in class. Knowing that some classes are too big, having around 120 students in one room, a professor or an assistant may opt not to one-by- one count and check the students’ presence with a list. Instead the


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professor may simply make a piece of paper be passed around for the students to affix their signature to mark their presence during the day’s lecture. However, professors also countercheck the day’s signature with previous attendance signatures making it difficult for one to completely copy a signature that isn’t his. This is the reason why majority of UP Diliman population haven’t tried this method to help their

friends because doing so will result to much bigger problems. UP students are always facing different obstacles and problems that hinder them from always being punctual in class such as traffic, exte nsion of a previous class, lenience of the professor, influence from friends, tardiness of the professor, lunch, and org activities (arranged from most to least mentioned) that makes it near impossible for one to be 100% on time. This makes it valid that the average approximation of tardiness is ~14% of the whole semester. Looking more on the interaction of the different factors in the survey, I uncovered different patterns in the UP Diliman community in terms of tardiness. According to further analysis, females are more fearful in terms coming late to class rather than males. This remains consistent with Mc lean and Anderson’s study on gender differences in fear and anxiety (2009) which simply states that females

report greater fear and are more likely to develop anxiety disorders than men. This is also held true when looking at who is most likely to have someone sign their name in an attendance sheet. It is because of the lack of fear in men compared to females that allow them to do such as acts, completely disregarding the risk they’re putting themselves in. Also, I found out that males do not ac tually differ

from females in terms of tardiness approximation. This is simply because tardiness due to e xternal factors that affect everyone and are not gender specific such as traffic are usually the biggest reason why people get late. And finally, people with t he age of 21 are more likely to be tardy than younger ages. This is because a person w ho is 21 years old is usually associated with adulthood, independence, and parental freedom, and this gets t ranslated into an academic setting. Also, undergraduates who are of this age are usually the seniors awaiting their graduation. It is also the year that senioritis, which is defined by Manning (2011) as a phenomenon when there is a decrease academic motivation, importance, and effort upon entering the se nior year of college, kicks in. They become full of thoughts of graduating that they neglect the consequences of their actions Personal Evaluation and Personal Reaction

Personally, I really appreciate the freedom given to us to choose our ow n topic of interest to make a survey on. It really made me explore the tendency of students to be tardy that often annoyed


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me ever since I entered college. The activity gave me opportunities to create questions, gather data, and analyze and look for patterns in said data which I highly enjoyed. This survey I think gave very fruitful results and conclusions but I highly recommend obtaining your sample in a more random method such as random sampling where everyone in the UP Diliman system has an equal chance of being part of the study and by having a greater sample size to be able to properly and sure ly make general statements that best describes the whole UP Diliman community


Bibliography

Farrar, R. J. (2010, January 1 ). Too Late to Learn: Student Tardiness in the Middle School. ProQuest LLC, BERNAD, Miguel A.. Filipino Time. Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture, [S.l.], v. 5, n. 3 6.1, p. 207-213, Jan. 2013. ISSN 2243-7886. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13185/586. McLean, C., & Anderson, E. (2009). Brave men and timid women? A review of the gender differences in fear and anxiety. Clinical Psychology Review , 29(6), 496-505. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2009.05.003 Manning, C. (2011). “Senioritis:” An Analysis of Academic Motivation and Burnout in College Students through the Lens of Positive Psychology.

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Appendix I Survey Questionnaire

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Tardiness Survey.docx

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