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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion

Reduce chronic school absence among early adolescents — AH‑07 Data Methodology and Measurement

On this page:  About the National Data  |  Methodology  |  History

About the National Data

Data

Data Source:  National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), ED/NCES

Baseline: 20.3 percent of 8th grade students missed 3 or more whole school days in the last month in 2017

Target: 16.4 percent

Numerator
Number of 8th grade students participating in the National Assessment of Educational Progress Reading Assessment who reported missing 3 or more whole school days in the last month.
Denominator
Number of 8th grade students participating in the National Assessment of Educational Progress Reading Assessment.
Target-setting method
Percentage point improvement
Target-setting method details
Percentage point improvement from the baseline using Cohen's h effect size of 0.10.
1
Target-setting method justification
Trend data were evaluated for this objective, but it was not possible to project a target because targets were not a statistically significant improvement from the baseline value. A percentage point improvement was calculated using Cohen's h effect size of 0.1. This method was used because the Healthy People 2030 Workgroup Subject Matter Experts anticipated a continued downward trend with the availability of more promising evidence-based interventions working to decrease the rates of chronic absenteeism.

Methodology

Questions used to obtain the national baseline data

(For additional information, please visit the data source page linked above.)

From the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress (student reported):

Numerator:
How many days were you absent from school in the last month?
  1. None
  2. 1-2 days
  3. 3-4 days
  4. 5-10 days
  5. More than 10 days

Methodology notes

Students could report that they missed no days, 1–2 days, 3–4 days, 5–10 days, or more than 10 days of school over the past month. The 3–4 days category was used as a cut-off as a conservative decision.

History

Comparable HP2020 objective
Modified, which includes core objectives that are continuing from Healthy People 2020 but underwent a change in measurement.
Changes between HP2020 and HP2030
This objective differs from Healthy People 2020 objective AH-5.6 in that objective AH-5.6 used data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) to track adolescents aged 12 to 17 years who missed 11 or more school days in the past 12 months due to illness or injury, while this objective uses data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to track 8th graders who missed 3 or more days of school in the last month.

1. Effect size h=0.1 was chosen to correspond with 10% improvement from a baseline of 50%.