Jennjou Chen

Cumulative class attendance and exam performance

This study considers the effect of cumulative class attendance while estimating the relationship between class attendance and students’ exam performance, using an individual-level data. We find that, cumulative attendance has produced a positive and significant impact on students’ exam performance. Attending lectures corresponds to a 4% improvement in exam performance, and the marginal impact of cumulative attendance on exam performance is also close to 4%. It is of note that the impact of attendance on exam performance is reduced about 0.4% after one controls for the cumulative attendance effect.

Do Supplemental Online Recorded Lectures Help Students Learn Microeconomics

This study sheds light on the relationship between the use of online recorded lectures and exam performance of students in the case of microeconomics. The study uses a rich panel data set covering Taiwanese students. Our results show that those who skip more classes and males are more likely to use online recorded lectures. As may be expected, most students access online recorded lectures just before exams, rather than immediately after lectures. Our fixed effects model shows a significant and positive relationship between students’ use of online recorded lectures and their grades.

Does Downloading PowerPoint Slides Before the Lecture Lead to Better Student Achievement

This reply responds to a comment by Cannon (2011) that opens the debate on consistency of the effect of downloading PowerPoint slides before lectures on students’ exam performance. Cannon (2011) points out potential endogeneity problems in Chen and Lin (2008) and attempts to explore the unconditional mean effect of downloading PowerPoint slides for the full sample. In this reply, we firstly argue that the estimates in our original article are consistent since the effect of interest is the “conditional†treatment effect but not the unconditional mean effect. We provide explanations for our rationale of estimating the “conditional†treatment effect. Secondly, we propose a modified downloading variable to replicate Cannon’s analysis. Our results suggest that downloading PowerPoint slides before the exam does not produce a significant effect on absent students’ exam performance which is different from the results in Cannon (2011). Our analysis does support Cannon’s argument that students fixed effects are different across different attendance status.

Effect of Peer Attendance on College Students’ Learning Outcomes in a Microeconomics Course

The authors’ main purpose in this article is to examine whether peer presence, measured by overall class attendance rate, has any significant effect on college students’ academic performance. They use a rich dataset from an intermediate microeconomics course from the fall of 2008 to the spring of 2013 at a public university in Taiwan. The estimation results reveal a significant and negative effect of peer attendance on individual students’ examination performance. This result suggests that potential distraction from peers dominates the beneficial effect of peer attendance. In addition, the subsample estimation shows that the presence of peers produces a negative effect on better-motivated students’ examination performance. Hence, the beneficial effects of a typical mandatory attendance policy considered in prior literature must be reassessed.

Effect of Physician Gender on Demand for Pap Tests

People’s demand for preventive medical care is one type of investment in health. The aim of this paper is to examine women’s demand for secondary prevention in Taiwan, focusing on the role a physician’s gender plays in women’s inclination to undergo Pap tests. Our estimation results show that regional ratio of female doctors has a positive and significant effect on utilization of Pap tests for the full sample and for women aged below 30. In addition, doctor’s gender matters only in utilization of Pap tests not in other types of preventive healthcare services in Taiwan. We suggest that the government may consider liberalizing medical laws to make it legal for trained female nurses or nurse practitioners to perform Pap tests in order to encourage the utilization of Pap tests, especially in rural and mountain areas. The government may also consider subsidizing the use of cervical cancer vaccines to help females prevent cervical cancer.