Original
University Absenteeism and Well-Being: An interpretation from Emotional Regulation and Perceived Value
Ramón Cladellas & Antoni Castelló
Departament of Basic, Developmental & Educational Psychology, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
Ansiedad y Estrés, (2026), 32(2), 75-84
https://doi.org/10.5093/anyes2026a9
https://www.ansiedadyestres.es
Bibliography reference
INFO ARTICLE
Received 8 May 2026
Accepted 10 June 2026
ABSTRACT
This study analyzes university absenteeism as a complex phenomenon closely linked to academic emotions, stress processes, and the perceived value of educational activities. The main objective was to identify the reasons for non-attendance in a sample of 847 students from Psychology, Humanities, and Education Sciences degrees at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. The results reveal high structural absenteeism, with more than 50% of students attending less than 60% of non-mandatory theoretical sessions. An exploratory factor analysis identified three consistent dimensions: learning-related factors, well-being, and access to information. Findings suggest that absenteeism can be interpreted as a potential emotional regulation strategy aimed at reducing academic discomfort. Teaching practices such as the literal reading of slides, unclear explanations, and unmotivating content are associated with boredom, frustration, and perceptions of wasted time, all of which increase avoidance behaviours. The well-being dimension, including physical, mental, and personal problems, further supports the interpretation of absenteeism as an emotional protection mechanism against academic distress and overload. In addition, access to slides and notes reduces the perceived added value of attending face-to-face lessons. Overall, absenteeism is interpreted as an adaptive and functional response to environments perceived as unstimulating or emotionally costly. These findings underscore the need to transform teaching practices toward reasoning-oriented models and to strengthen institutional support in order to improve student's psychological well-being.
KEYWORDS
university absenteeism
emotions
well-being
emotional regulation
Perceived value
Absentismo Universitario y bienestar: una interpretación desde la regulación emocional y el valor percibido
Ansiedad y Estrés, (2026), 32(2), 75-84
https://doi.org/10.5093/anyes2026a9
https://www.ansiedadyestres.es
Bibliography reference
RESUMEN
Este estudio analiza el absentismo universitario como un fenómeno complejo estrechamente vinculado a las emociones académicas, los procesos de estrés y el valor percibido de las actividades educativas. El objetivo principal fue identificar las razones de la no asistencia en una muestra de 847 estudiantes de los grados de Psicología, Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación de la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. Los resultados revelan un alto absentismo estructural, con más del 50% de los estudiantes asistiendo a menos del 60% de las clases teóricas no obligatorias. Un análisis factorial exploratorio identificó tres dimensiones consistentes: factores relacionados con el aprendizaje, bienestar y acceso a la información. Los resultados sugieren que el absentismo opera con frecuencia como una estrategia de regulación emocional orientada a reducir el malestar académico. Las prácticas docentes como la lectura literal de diapositivas, las explicaciones poco claras y los contenidos poco motivadores se asocian con el aburrimiento, la frustración y la percepción de pérdida de tiempo, lo que incrementa las conductas de evitación. La dimensión de bienestar, que incluye problemas físicos, mentales y personales, refuerza la interpretación del absentismo como un mecanismo de protección emocional frente al malestar y la sobrecarga académica. Asimismo, el acceso a diapositivas y apuntes reduce el valor añadido percibido de la asistencia a las clases presenciales. En conjunto, el absentismo se interpreta como una respuesta adaptativa y funcional ante entornos percibidos como poco estimulantes o emocionalmente costosos. Estos resultados subrayan la necesidad de transformar las prácticas docentes hacia modelos orientados al razonamiento y de reforzar el apoyo institucional con el fin de mejorar el bienestar psicológico del estudiantado.
PALABRAS CLAVE
Absentismo Universitario
Emociones
Bienestar
Regulación emocional
Valor percibido
Introduction
University absenteeism is a relevant phenomenon in Psychology of Education and Health, due to its impact on both academic performance and the emotional well-being of students. Far from being a merely disciplinary situation, it reflects a complex set of cognitive, motivational, and emotional processes that interact with the characteristics of the educational context. Several studies have indicated that non-attendance at class is related to experiences of academic distress, perceptions of low utility of educational activities, and difficulties in establishing a meaningful bond with the learning process (Álvarez Pérez and López Aguilar, 2011; Moores et al., 2019). From this perspective, absenteeism can be understood as a form of emotional regulation aimed at avoiding situations perceived as unstimulating, frustrating, or meaningless.
Academic Emotions and University Absenteeism
Academic emotions constitute one of the most relevant psychological mechanisms for understanding the decision of whether or not to attend a class. According to Pekrun's (2017) control-value model, the emotions that emerge in educational contexts depend on the perception of control over the task and the value attributed to the activity. According to this research, when a student perceives low control or little value, negative emotional states are expected to emerge —such as boredom, frustration, academic anxiety—that favor avoidance behaviors.
This perspective is complemented by Cassady and Johnson’s (2002) model of academic anxiety, which distinguishes between cognitive anxiety (worry), characterized by intrusive thoughts and failure anticipation, and physiological anxiety (emotionality), associated with autonomic activation and somatic discomfort. These components interfere with essential learning processes—such as attention, working memory, and processing capacity—and can turn class attendance into an emotionally threatening situation, especially when explanations are unclear, the content load is high, or the teaching methodology does not facilitate comprehension.
Whereas academic anxiety operates through threat anticipation and cognitive interference, boredom functions through the perception of low utility and lack of stimulation, constituting another of the most consistent predictors of absenteeism. Indeed, boredom is one of the emotional state most closely linked to absenteeism (Sharp et al., 2020). It hinders concentration (Finkielsztein, 2020; Mann and Robinson, 2009) and appears when the class is perceived as not useful (Barbalet, 1999) or redundant (Desalegn et al., 2014). This lack of interest reduces performance and the interaction with professors (Hamdi, 2006; Kottasz, 2005; Moore et al., 2008; Romer, 1993). Absenteeism rises when the contents are not considered professionally relevant (Turull et al., 2019) or useful for the assessments (Barlow and Fleischer, 2011; Moores et al., 2019).
Gross’s (2015) emotion regulation model states that non-attendance can be interpreted as a avoidance strategy aimed at reducing academic discomfort. This perspective helps explain why emotions such as anxiety or boredom not only affect learning but also directly influence the decision not to attend lessons. In this sense, teaching practices play a key role, as they can intensify precisely the emotions that students attempt to regulate through avoidance.
The way teaching is approached is a determining factor as well. There is more absenteeism when teaching is limited to the exposition of contents, when explanations do not facilitate comprehension, or when the reading of slides does not provide added value to the lesson (Martin-Criado and Alonso-Carmona, 2024). According to expectancy-value theory (Eccles and Wigfield, 2020), if the lessons are perceived as useless or not aligned with assessment demands, the value attributed to the activity decreases and the probability of not attending increases proportionally. Practices such as the literal reading of slides, the lack of clarity in explanations, or the absence of active participation contribute to academic distress.
The literature on academic stress shows that the accumulation of demands, evaluative pressure, and the lack of perceived support can generate emotional saturation (Van Der Feltz-Cornelis et al., 2020). This type of academic stress is characterized by feelings of overload, emotional exhaustion, and a perception of ineffectiveness, elements that have been linked to avoidance behaviors in educational contexts (Pascoe et al., 2020; Bedewy and Gabriel, 2015). Several studies have noted that when students experience high levels of stress, they tend to adopt avoidant coping strategies, including non-attending the lessons, in order to reduce exposure to situations perceived as threatening or emotionally costly (Misra and McKean, 2000; Robotham and Julian, 2006). From this perspective, absenteeism should not be interpreted solely as a lack of interest, and may also reflect an emotional protection response to an environment that is perceived as excessively demanding or unsupportive.
This view is consistent with research on academic anxiety and perceived stress, which shows that students tend to adopt avoidant coping strategies when academic demands exceed their perceived control or generate emotional overload. In this regard, Sanz and García Vera (2018) highlight that academic anxiety emerges when evaluative pressure and performance expectations surpass students’ coping resources, leading to avoidance-oriented responses. Similarly, González and Landero (2014) demonstrate that perceived stress and coping styles are directly associated with psychological well-being in university students, stressing the idea that absenteeism may operate as a protective mechanism against emotionally costly academic situations.
Perceived Value, Technology, and Teaching Practices
Academic emotional states are conditioned by teaching practices, and at this point technology plays a relevant role. Its presence is evident both in teaching, with the increasingly widespread use of tools like PowerPoint, and among students, who have laptops or tablets. Although it was initially assumed that it would improve learning, the evidence shows that this is not always the case (Cladellas and Castelló, 2017). Furthermore, students frequently use their devices for activities unrelated to the class (Del sol Barreto-Cabrera et al., 2024; Ott, 2017). Concurrently, evidence shows that taking notes by hand produces better learning outcomes than typing on computers or laptops (Flanigan et al., 2024).
A rarely considered characteristic is that slides tend to reify knowledge, presenting it in the same format in which it is expected to be requested in the exam. While literalness is not usually assumed in oral explanations, the written visualization of the content—especially when the teaching discourse reproduces almost word for word what is projected—causes these expressions to be interpreted as formal definitions and to become material to be memorized. This dynamic does not enhance meaningful cognitive processing, but rather reduces the perceived value of the activity, generating low-value emotions such as boredom and indifference (Pekrun, 2017). In these cases, the teaching action becomes subordinated to the presentation and loses added value, as it contributes to nothing different from what is already written in the slides.
Cladellas et al. (2013) pointed out that verbal slides, although received through a visual channel, are processed in the language area, which simultaneously must devote attention to the teacher's oral information; therefore, "if you read you do not listen and if you listen you do not read", unless both messages are essentially identical. This cognitive interference may contribute to feelings of overload and the perception that the class does not facilitate comprehension, which intensifies emotional distress.
This kind of use of PowerPoint generates monotonous classes that are easily avoidable when students can access the slides online. A high load of verbal content produces negative effects if teachers limit themselves to repeating the same information. According to Castelló et al. (2020), 94% of Spanish university teaching staff use PowerPoint in more than half of their theoretical classes, but the problem—as indicated by these authors and Fjortoft (2005)—is not the tool itself, but the mechanical reproduction of the content of the slides during the exposition. This dynamic is likely to impact learning. The immediate access to contents synthesized on slides or otherwise favors superficial comprehension and reduces the effort necessary to analyze, reflect, and establish connections between ideas (Chávez et al., 2023). The redundancy between the teaching discourse and the slides encapsulates the contents in the projected sentences and directs students towards memorization. From an emotional perspective, this orientation towards superficial learning increases evaluative anxiety, as students perceive that they must memorize large amounts of information without fully understanding it. Consequently, the teaching person ceases to be the main source of information and, above all, of reasoning and comprehensive explanation, rather being at the service of the slides.
Academic Motivation and Memorization Orientation
The orientation towards memorization not only affects learning, but is also linked to student motivation. One of the main motivations of most students resides in passing the subjects and obtaining the corresponding degree (Palma Luengo et al., 2024). To achieve this, literal notes’ and slides’ memorization constitutes an adaptive response, especially when assessments themselves demand rote-learning. Assessments that request defining, listing characteristics associated with an object, or detecting a property that belongs (or not) to a certain object can be resolved through memorization. In contrast, tasks that require application, exemplification, or problem resolution can hardly be tackled with memorization strategies.
If the lessons and the presentations’ content are fundamentally of declarative – definitions, classifications, properties, and declarative relationships – it is a congruent consequence that the assessments are based on recall. On the contrary, classes oriented to reasoning require the active intervention of the teachers, arguing, exemplifying, highlighting, comparing, etc., and presentations, if used, acquire a secondary function – they are at the professor’s service, to illustrate the professor’s ideas. Most students' experiences combine both types of teaching, which determines whether they adopt a memoristic or comprehensive role. This dynamic evidences that obtaining a degree does not guarantee meaningful learning (Pérez Zúñiga et al., 2025).
From a cost-benefit approach, students avoid the lessons they perceive as irrelevant to obtaining the desired grade, especially if the content is boring or poorly connected to their interests (Díaz and Pons, 2024; Martín-Criado and Alonso-Carmona, 2024). For instance, absenteeism increases when exams are close because many students prefer to study independently – something that increases their performance in exams – rather than wasting their time in useless lessons (Pérez and Graell, 2004; Schmulian and Coetzee, 2011). Direct access to assessable materials reinforces this trend (Barlow and Fleischer, 2011; Sacristán-Díaz et al., 2012). From this perspective, rote orientation can be interpreted as a functional adaptation to the demands of the assessment system. When the lessons are perceived as redundant, excessively centered on the literal transmission of contents, or when the understanding of the contents is poorly aligned with the assessments, the perceived value decreases and the probability of not attending increases. Consequently, absenteeism ceases to be solely an instrumental decision and starts to work as a form of emotional protection against negative academic experiences.
Because the study does not incorporate direct measures of anxiety or stress, the analysis is framed as a preliminary approach to the emotional mechanisms that may contribute to university absenteeism. However, the link of anxiety and stress with the measured variables has been thoroughly stablished in the current literature.
Objectives
The present study has as its main objective to analyze university absenteeism from a psychological perspective that integrates academic emotional states, the perception of educational value, and teaching practices. It is intended to understand how these processes interact and contribute to the decision to attend or not theoretical lessons in Social Sciences degrees. Specifically, the study aims to:
• Identify the reasons for absenteeism perceived by students, including factors related to teaching-learning, emotional well-being, and access to information.
• Examine the internal structure of the instrument designed to evaluate these reasons, seeking evidence of content and construct validity through an exploratory factor analysis.
• Compare absenteeism patterns between the Faculty of Psychology and the degrees belonging to Social and Educational Sciences, in order to determine if the identified reasons remain stable in different academic contexts.
In a first phase, a pilot study was carried out in the Faculty of Psychology. In the following academic year, the same design was applied to six Social Sciences degrees with the purpose of checking if the results observed in Psychology were replicated in other educational contexts. Given that the methodology used in both phases was identical, it is described in a unified manner, while the results are presented separately for each study.
Method
Participants
This study was conducted in the academic years 2023-24 and 2024-25, with a total sample of 847 university students belonging to seven Social Sciences degrees at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. The study followed a cross-sectional observational design and used a convenience sampling strategy, as participation depended on the voluntary response of students who were accessible during data collection. Data from the Faculty of Psychology were collected during the 2023-2024 academic year; data from the Faculties of Social and Educational Sciences were collected in the 2024-2025 academic year. To evaluate the representativeness of the sample in relation to the total population, the number of people enrolled in each course and degree was requested from the Electronic Registry of Access to Public Information. Table 1 shows the number and percentage of students by degree and course year who participated in the study.
Insert Table 1
Through stratified sampling, strata corresponding to course year, degree, and faculty were established. Within each group, students were randomly invited to participate, although final participation was voluntary. This methodological strategy responds to the commitment to respect the ethical principles set out by the American Psychological Association (2020).
Instruments
Data were collected through a structured survey created with Google Forms. The questionnaire included closed questions, both dichotomous (Yes/No) and multiple-choice, as well as Likert-type items with a response range of 0 to 10. The instrument designed to evaluate the reasons for absenteeism was elaborated specifically for this study based on previous literature and a systematic process of content validation. Its construction took as a reference the questionnaire by Gil-Galván (2019), which was adapted and expanded to adjust to the objectives of the present research and the context of Social Sciences degrees. Content validity was guaranteed through a three-phase procedure:
1. Review of the literature on university absenteeism, teaching practices, and motivational factors (Álvarez Pérez and López Aguilar, 2011; Khan et al., 2019; Moores et al., 2019).
2. Focus groups with students and teaching staff from the Psychology degree, whose purpose was to identify relevant reasons for absenteeism and ensure that the items reflected real student experiences.
3. Review by experts, in which teachers from all the faculties involved in the study participated. The clarity, relevance, and representativeness of each item were evaluated, which allowed refining the questionnaire until obtaining the final version. This process ensures that the items adequately reflected the construct "reasons for absenteeism" and were relevant for degrees in Social Sciences.
To examine the internal structure of the instrument and provide evidence of construct validity, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with Varimax rotation was performed, applied separately to Psychology and to the degrees of Letters and Educational Sciences. The EFA identified three conceptually coherent dimensions: learning, well-being, and access to information. The internal consistency was adequate in the three factors: (Learning: a = .82; Well-being: a = .90; Access to information: a = .76), confirming that the instrument is consistent and suitable to examine the internal structure of the reasons for absenteeism.
Given that the data were collected in two different academic years (2023–2024 for Psychology and 2024–2025 for the remaining Social Sciences degrees), the exploratory factor analyses were conducted separately for both groups. This decision avoids potential temporal biases associated with changes in teaching practices, academic workload, or institutional conditions that may affect the correlations among items. Conducting independent EFAs ensures that the factor structure identified in each cohort reflects the internal organization of absenteeism reasons within its specific temporal context. The emergence of an identical three factor solution in both groups supports the structural stability of the instrument and justifies the subsequent comparison of mean differences across degrees through ANOVA, allowing us to distinguish between the shared conceptual structure of absenteeism and its context specific expression.
Procedure
The questionnaire was administered during the months of February and March of each academic year through a mixed procedure that combined face-to-face and digital strategies. This dual track allowed maximizing the participation rate and ensuring that students from all degrees and years had the opportunity to respond. First, an in-person administration was carried out in the classrooms. The research team visited different class groups and briefly explained the study's objectives, guarantees of anonymity, and the voluntary nature of participation. After this explanation, the link to the questionnaire was provided so that students could complete it from their mobile devices. In a complementary manner, digital dissemination was carried out through class delegates, who shared the questionnaire link via WhatsApp and other communication platforms commonly used among the students. This strategy allowed reaching students who were not present at the time of the face-to-face administration and facilitated participation with flexible schedules. In both cases, the anonymity of the responses was guaranteed, and it was explicitly informed that participation would have no academic consequences. Before starting the questionnaire, the students had to confirm having read the information about the study and had to explicitly accept to participate, following the ethical recommendations of the American Psychological Association (2020). The questions relating to absenteeism focused on the frequency of attendance in first-semester subjects, in order to avoid variations derived from changes in teaching organization or in the assessment load of the second semester. This procedure allowed obtaining a large, diverse, and methodologically sound sample, guaranteeing the representativeness of the different degrees and years included in the study and ensuring the quality of the data used in subsequent analyses.
Statistical analysis
To identify the causes of absenteeism, an exploratory factor analysis of the collected data was performed. All statistical calculations were obtained with the SPSS program (version 21). The study design is cross-sectional and exploratory, and does not intend to establish causal relationships, but to identify consistent patterns of association between teaching practices, access to materials, and absenteeism.
Results
As indicated, the data collected refers to theoretical classes of core, mandatory, and elective subjects where attendance is voluntary, from the first semester.
Absenteeism in the Psychology Faculty and Humanities and Educational Sciences Faculties
Insert Table 2
As observed in Table 2, 49.83% of Psychology students attend less than 60% of theoretical classes where attendance is not mandatory.
In the analysis of the degrees belonging to the faculties of Letters and Educational Sciences, no significant differences were observed. For this reason, the results regarding the percentage of absenteeism are presented in a grouped manner for the six evaluated degrees.
54% of students present an attendance of less than 60% in non-mandatory theoretical classes. This percentage is very close to the figure detected in the Faculty of Psychology. These results indicate the presence of high structural absenteeism in non-mandatory theoretical classes, shared across degrees and faculties.
Reasons for Not Attending Classes
The reasons associated with absenteeism were evaluated by the students using a Likert-type scale, with values from 0 (not important at all) to 10 (very important). The items that were finally considered after the validation of the questionnaire follow, each of them accompanied by its corresponding abbreviated description in parentheses, which will be used as a reference in subsequent mentions.
• Direct reading of PowerPoint (PPT reading): the professor limits themselves to reading or faithfully following the contents of the slides, without adding extra explanations or using PowerPoint as a visual resource with images, outlines, or diagrams; predominating a verbal format based on "bullet points".
• Availability of PowerPoint slides in advance (PPT before): the student has access to the slides before the class is taught.
• Subsequent availability of PowerPoint slides (PPT after): the student has the PowerPoint once the class is finished.
• Priority use of the blackboard (Blackboard): the teacher primarily uses the blackboard instead of PowerPoint, or as a complement to it.
• Non-participatory methodology (non-participatory): the teacher acts as a transmitter of knowledge, while the student body adopts a passive role, limiting themselves to listening and taking notes, without being involved in the learning process.
• Unstimulating contents (Unmotivating contents): learning contents or materials that do not arouse interest in students.
• Incomprehensible explanations (Confusing explanations): those explanations that fail to make the contents understood, whether due to excessive technicalities, a lack of clear structure, or time constraints.
• Availability of notes from other years (Notes other years): access to materials or notes for the subject from previous years.
• Physical health problems (Physical health): difficulties in attending derived from medical conditions, whether temporary, chronic, or post-surgical recoveries that require specific care.
• Mental health problems (Mental health): not being able to attend class due to a psychological or mental problem.
• Personal problems (Personal problems): the student cannot attend class for various justified reasons.
• Perception of not learning (Not learning): the perception that new knowledge or skills are not being acquired.
• Feeling of wasted time (Waste of time): students perceive that attending class does not mean a significant improvement in their learning.
• Distance to the university center (Distance home): when non-attendance at class is related to the distance between the habitual residence and the university, as well as the time invested in commuting.
• Workload from other subjects (Work other subjects): preference for dedicating class time to work or activities for other subjects.
• Lack of motivation with the degree (Demotivation degree): not going to class due to having lost interest or enthusiasm for the chosen studies.
• Ease of passing (Easy to pass): when passing does not depend on attending class or not.
• Lack of active participation (Cannot participate): when the teaching staff is dedicated to transmitting contents and, therefore, the class format limits interaction with the teaching staff.
• Influence of the social environment (Influence friendships): the decision to not attend class is conditioned by the group of friends, directly or indirectly.
Table 3 presents the means and standard deviations of the different reasons for absenteeism according to the students' perception.
Insert Table 3
Using these variables, an exploratory factor analysis of all the identified reasons was carried out. The results obtained, after applying the Varimax rotation, are presented in tables 4 and 5. Before proceeding to the EFA, the adequacy of the data was evaluated using two standard tests:
• The KMO (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin) index reached a value of .86, which indicates a meritorious sampling adequacy and confirms that the partial correlations between items are low enough to justify a factor analysis.
• Bartlett's test of sphericity was significant (?² = 4,218.34; df = 171; p < .001), which demonstrates that the correlation matrix is not an identity matrix and that the items share sufficient variance to identify latent factors.
These results support the relevance of applying an EFA and guarantee that the resulting factor structure is statistically interpretable. The principal components method was used as the extraction procedure, since the objective was to identify grouping patterns among items and not to estimate a confirmatory model. Orthogonal Varimax rotation was selected to maximize the interpretative clarity of the factor loadings and to facilitate the identification of conceptually differentiated dimensions.
The Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) revealed three clearly differentiated factors:
1. Factors related to teaching-learning (PPT reading, confusing explanations, unmotivating contents, not perceived learning, and waste of time)
2. Factors related to well-being (physical health, mental health, personal problems)
3. Access to information (advance or subsequent availability of PowerPoint, notes from other years)
The factor loadings, listed in Tables 4 and 5, show high and consistent saturations within each dimension, which provides solid evidence of construct validity. Overall, the KMO and Bartlett values, along with the obtained factor structure, confirm that the instrument presents adequate construct validity and is methodologically appropriate for analyzing the reasons for absenteeism in Social Sciences degrees.
Insert Table 4
The exploratory analysis identified three main factors that, together, explain 61.72% of the total variance. The factor with the most weight is linked to learning, which represents 23.6% of the variance. The second factor, related to personal aspects, represents 21.5%, while the third refers to alternative access to contents, explaining the remaining 16.5%.
Insert Table 5
The exploratory analysis allowed identifying three main factors that jointly explain 62% of the total variance. The factor with the greatest weight is related to learning, with a contribution of 27.7%. The second factor corresponds to access to contents, representing 17.3%, while the third responds to personal reasons, explaining the remaining 17.1%. Factors related to teaching practices and access to materials concentrate the highest factor loadings, whereas personal factors show a comparatively lesser explanatory weight.
Differences between degrees in absenteeism reasons (ANOVA)
A one-way ANOVA was conducted to examine whether the intensity of the reasons for absenteeism differed across the seven degrees included in the study. Although the exploratory factor analysis revealed an identical three factor structure in Psychology and in the remaining Social Sciences degrees, significant mean differences emerged in the intensity attributed to these factors.
Insert Table 6
Specifically, significant differences were found for the Learning and Access to information factors. For the Learning factor, Social Education differed significantly from History (p <.001), Anthropology (p = .003) and Archaeology (p < .001); Primary Education differed from History (p = .014) and Archaeology (p = .030), and Psychology differed from History (p < .001), Anthropology (p = .011) and Archaeology (p < .001).
Regarding the access to information factor, the pattern of differences was broader. Psychology shower higher scores than all other degrees, with significant differences specifically in comparison with History (p < .001), Anthropology (p < .001), Archaeology (p < .001), Primary Education (p = .009) and Social Education (p = .026). In addition, Pedagogy obtained significantly higher values than History (p = .012) and Anthropology (p = .025), and Primary Education also exceeded both History (p = .010) and Anthropology (p = .043).
Discussion
The results obtained allow interpreting university absenteeism as a phenomenon closely linked to the student's emotional experience and to the value they attribute to educational activities. In line with Pekrun's (2017) control-value model, negative academic emotions, especially boredom, frustration, and evaluative anxiety, may emerge when the lessons are perceived as not useful, difficult to understand, or poorly stimulating. This dynamic is clearly reflected in the most highly rated reasons for absenteeism, among which literal reading of slides, confusing explanations, and the feeling of a waste of time stand out. When teaching does not add any value to the available materials, attendance is not perceived as necessary and the probability of avoiding the lessons increases.
Although the present study does not include direct measures of anxiety or stress, interpreting absenteeism as a functional, emotional response is theoretically justified. According to Gross’s (2015) model of emotion regulation, individuals tend to avoid situations anticipated as emotionally costly, even when such discomfort is not explicitly verbalized. Similarly, the control-value theory (Pekrun, 2017) predicts that when an academic activity is appraised as low in value and low in control, negative emotions such as boredom, frustration, or evaluative anxiety promote withdrawal behaviors. From this perspective, non-attendance can be understood as an avoidance-oriented coping strategy aimed at reducing negative emotional activation and temporarily restoring a sense of control. This interpretation is consistent with research showing that, under conditions of academic overload, ambiguity, or insufficient support, students frequently adopt avoidant coping strategies—including absenteeism—to protect themselves from emotionally aversive contexts (Misra & McKean, 2000; Robotham & Julian, 2006).
The high percentage of students who attend less than 60% of theoretical classes—both in Psychology and in the Social and Educational Sciences degrees—confirms the existence of structural absenteeism in contexts where unidirectional transmission of contents predominates. This pattern coincides with previous research indicating that exposition-based teaching, lack of active participation, and poor connection between contents and assessment reduce the perceived value of face-to-face attendance (Martin-Criado and Alonso-Carmona, 2024; Moores et al., 2019). From an emotional perspective, these practices may generate emotional states associated to low-value lessons, such as boredom, which hinder concentration and favor avoidance behaviors.
Technology plays a significant role in this dynamic. Although tools like PowerPoint can facilitate content organization, their mechanical use —especially the literal reading of slides—produces cognitive interference and reduces comprehension, as noted by Cladellas et al., (2013); the high score given to this reason in both studies indicates that technology, when used redundantly, decreases the differential value of face-to-face attendance and contributes to academic distress. Likewise, the advance or subsequent availability of slides, together with access to classnotes from other years, stresses the idea that students evaluate the usefulness of attending based on the added value that the class provides compared to the available materials.
The exploratory factor analyses conducted separately for Psychology and for the rest of the degrees revealed an identical three factor structure, confirming the structural stability of the instrument across academic contexts. However, the proportion of variance explained by each factor differed slightly between groups. In Psychology and Education, all three dimensions—Learning, Well being, and Access to information—received higher mean scores, suggesting a more intense perception of both educational and personal barriers to attendance. In contrast, students from the other Social Sciences degrees attributed comparatively lower importance to these reasons. These differences do not alter the underlying structure but reflect contextual modulations in the relative weight of each dimension, indicating that the motivational intensity associated with absenteeism depends on the specific university degree programs.
Another relevant aspect is the relationship between absenteeism and academic stress. The literature shows that the accumulation of demands, evaluative pressure, and the lack of perceived support can generate emotional saturation (Van Der Feltz-Cornelis et al., 2020), which leads to avoidant coping strategies, among them non-attendance (Misra and McKean, 2000). In this study, the well-being factor—which groups physical health, mental health, and personal problems—presents excellent internal consistence and confirms that absenteeism may also function as an emotional protection mechanism in the face of contexts perceived as excessively demanding or unsupportive. This finding is especially relevant in a university context where levels of emotional distress have steadily increased in recent years, as shown by recent studies evidencing high rates of anxiety and depression in university students (Schmits et al., 2021; Mastrokoukou et al., 2024), as well as a greater exposure to stressful life events, which are consistently associated with a deterioration in the mental health of the student body (Greenwell-Barnden et al., 2026), alongside a generalized increase in academic stress documented in recent reviews (Roy et al., 2025).
The memorization orientation of the assessment system constitutes another key element to understand absenteeism. When assessments focus on the literal recall of contents, students adopt superficial study strategies and prioritize access to synthesized materials, something that reduces the value of attending the lessons, which are just a coster way to get the contents. This trend, widely documented (Pérez Zúñiga et al., 2025; Díaz and Pons, 2024), is reflected in the high score given to the availability of classnotes and to the ease of passing without attending. From an emotional perspective, this dynamic may increase evaluative anxiety and reinforces the perception that the lessons do not contribute significantly to academic performance.
Overall, the results suggest that university absenteeism should not be interpreted solely as a lack of interest or commitment, but may also be understood as an adaptive response to educational experiences perceived as unhelpful, redundant, or emotionally costly. The interaction between teaching practices, academic emotions, stress, and evaluative orientation configures a scenario in which attendance loses value and avoidance becomes a functional strategy. From an applied perspective, these findings underpin the need to promote teaching practices that increase the perceived value of face-to-face attendance: reasoning-oriented lessons, non-declarative use of technology, participatory activities, and assessments that require comprehension and application. Additionally, it is essential that university institutions develop emotional and academic support strategies that reduce students’ saturation and distress.
Limitations
The study presents several limitations that should be considered when interpreting the results.
First, the instrument used is newly created. Although the questionnaire shows evidence of content and construct validity, it would be necessary to replicate its factor structure in larger and more diverse samples to confirm the stability of the identified dimensions. This aspect is especially relevant given that the instrument aims to identify situational patterns of absenteeism and not to measure a stable psychological trait.
Second, the design of the study is cross-sectional, which prevents establishing causal relationships among teaching practices, academic emotions, and absenteeism. The results allow for the identification of consistent associations, but not the direction nor the temporality of the effects. Future longitudinal studies would allow analyzing how these processes evolve throughout the academic year and in response to changes in teaching or evaluative demands.
Third, the data come from self-reports, which can introduce biases of social desirability, memory, or subjective interpretation of the items. Although the perceptions of the student body provide valuable information about their emotional and academic experience, they do not guarantee full objectivity.
Finally, the study did not include direct measures of anxiety, perceived stress, or emotion regulation strategies. As a result, the interpretation of absenteeism as a potential emotional regulation mechanism cannot be empirically confirmed and should be understood as a theoretically grounded but not demonstrated explanation. This conceptual gap limits the strength of the claims regarding the emotional processes underlying absenteeism. Future research should incorporate validated measures of academic emotions and regulatory strategies to empirically test the mechanisms proposed in this study.
Practical Implications
The present findings suggest that university absenteeism should be understood not only as a behavioural outcome, but also as an indicator of students’ psychological adjustment to the academic environment. In line with the results, non-attendance often operates as an emotion regulation strategy aimed at reducing academic distress and perceived overload.
From an applied perspective, universities should implement early detection systems based on attendance patterns, identifying absenteeism as a potential marker of emotional difficulties. In addition, the development of academic stress prevention programs—focused on time management, emotional regulation, and coping strategies—would help reduce avoidance behaviours.
The results also highlight the need for psychological and educational guidelines for teaching staff, promoting active, reasoning-oriented methodologies that increase the perceived value of face-to-face teaching and reduce boredom and frustration. Finally, strengthening integrated mental health support services, coordinated with academic structures, is essential to address the well-being dimension underlying absenteeism.
Overall, these measures would contribute to transforming the academic environment into a psychologically sustainable context, improving both student well-being and engagement.
Conclusion
Results show that university absenteeism cannot be understood solely as a lack of interest or commitment, but as an emotional and cognitive response to educational experiences perceived as unhelpful, redundant, or emotionally costly.
The interaction among teaching practices, academic emotions, and the perceived value of the educational activity constitutes a central axis for explaining the decision to attend or not the lessons.
The most highly rated reasons for absenteeism—literal reading of slides, confusing explanations, and feeling of a waste of time—evidence that teaching based on unidirectional exposition seems to reduce the differential value of face-to-face attendance.
Likewise, the availability of prior or subsequent materials and access to notes from other years stresses the perception that attendance provides no additional benefit.
From an emotional perspective, these practices may generate emotions associated with the perception of low-value teaching, such as boredom or indifference, which can favor avoidance behaviors.
The study also highlights the role of emotional well-being in attendance. Physical, mental, or personal health problems not only affect presence in the classroom, but act as indicators of academic distress and perceived stress. This finding underlines the need to consider absenteeism as a phenomenon linked to the psychological well-being of the student body and not solely to academic factors.
Overall, these results suggest that improving attendance requires transforming teaching practices toward models that increase the perceived value of face-to-face attendance: reasoning-oriented classes, meaningful use of technology, participatory activities, and assessments that promote understanding and application. Furthermore, it is necessary to strengthen institutional resources for academic and emotional support to reduce student saturation and distress.
In short, understanding absenteeism from an emotional perspective makes it possible to advance towards educational environments that are more sensitive to the cognitive and affective needs of the student body, and helps design interventions that improve both the quality of teaching and university well-being.
Funding
“This research is funded by the project “HealthyMindEd: Promoting healthy digital teaching and learning in higher education” (Erasmus+ KA220-HED Cooperation Partnerships).
Conflicts of Interest
“The authors declare no conflicts of interest”
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