Longitudinal pathways between emotional difficulties and school absenteeism in middle childhood: Evidence from developmental cascades

Abstract

Emotional difficulties are associated with both authorised and unauthorised school absence, but there has been little longitudinal research and the temporal nature of these associations remains unclear. This study presents three-wave random-intercepts panel models of longitudinal reciprocal relationships between teacher-reported emotional difficulties and authorised and unauthorised school absence in 2,542 English children aged 6 to 9 years old at baseline, who were followed-up annually. Minor differences in the stability effects were observed between genders but only for the authorised absence model. Across all time-points, children with greater emotional difficulties had more absences, and vice versa (authorised: ρ = .23-.29, p < .01; unauthorised: ρ = .28, p < .01). At the within-person level, concurrent associations showed that emotional difficulties were associated with greater authorised (β = .15-.17, p < .01) absence at Time 3 only, but with less unauthorised (β = -.08--.13, p < .05) absence at Times 1 and 2. In cross-lagged pathways, neither authorised nor unauthorised absence predicted later emotional difficulties, and emotional difficulties did not predict later authorised absence at any time-point. However, greater emotional difficulties were associated with fewer unauthorised absences across time (β = -13--.22, p < .001). The implications of these findings are discussed.