Truancy as a form of risky behavior among Czech adolescents: selected research results Truancy is included by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic (hereinafter referred to as the Ministry of Education and Culture) among the so-called risky forms of behavior, which he defines as "various forms of behavior that have negative effects on the health, social or psychological functioning of an individual and/or threaten his social environment" (National strategy for the primary prevention of risky behavior of children and youth for the period 2013-2018, 2013, p. 9). In addition to truancy and non-fulfilment of school duties, the Ministry of Education and Culture also includes various forms of aggression and self-aggression (e.g. bullying, cyberbullying, intolerance and extremism, vandalism), eating disorders, addictive behavior (substance and so-called non-substance addictions), risky sports activities and risky behavior in traffic, the negative influence of sects and risky sexual behavior.

In the paper, the authors present selected results of research focused on mapping protective and risk factors of adolescents; they analyze the results regarding truancy in more detail. Truancy is among the most common forms of risky behavior that pedagogues encounter in their practice, yet the authors believe that it is not given the attention it deserves, especially in research activities.

Experimentation with risks is typical during adolescence, mostly temporary, but possible health risks (including social risks) cannot be neglected. There is talk of the so-called new youth morbidity, which is currently the main cause of mortality in this developmental period. In this context, the World Health Organization (WHO) has defined adolescents as a separate risk population group, and adolescent health is defined, among other things, by the absence of risk-problem behavior. The syndrome of risky behavior in adolescence (hereinafter referred to as SRCH-D) contains three main areas of risky behavior (Hamanová, Kabíček, 2001):

  1. substance abuse - in Czech primary and secondary schools, the use of legal addictive substances and marijuana is a serious problem, non-substance addictions associated with information technologies are on the rise; the age of users is decreasing and the number of girls is increasing;
  2. negative phenomena in the field of psychosocial development – ​​behavioral disorders and manifestations of social maladaptation, especially various forms of aggressive behavior including self-harm and suicidal behavior, school failure, truancy, running away, delinquency;
  3. risky behavior in the field of reproductive health – premature sexual life, changing partners, early and unwanted pregnancies, venereal diseases.

It is obvious that truancy and avoiding school duties are among the risky forms of behavior that can have a major impact on the child's school performance and future employment. At the same time, they can be one of the "symptoms" of risky behavior syndrome or more serious behavioral disorders (in this case, they are often combined with other types of disordered behavior, especially lying, substance abuse, and delinquency).

Methodological recommendations for the primary prevention of risky behavior among children and youth (2013), especially its appendices, which include they also deal with truancy. The prevention of truancy, the method of excusing the absence of pupils, the solution of unexcused absence and the procedure of the participating entities are covered by the Methodical Instruction of the Ministry of Education and Culture on the unified procedure for releasing and excusing pupils from classes (2002).

Research methodology

The Department of Social Pathology and Sociology of the Faculty of Education of the University of Hradec Králové (hereinafter referred to as PdF UHK) has long been dealing with the issue of risky behavior of pupils and students, including the issue of truancy. Since 2015, the department has been conducting research on behavior affecting health in adolescence, which maps risky and protective behavior in connection with the psychological and social characteristics of the individual (e.g. physical activity, social support, depression). The aforementioned research is currently taking place in two regions of the Czech Republic - the Pardubice and Hradec Králové regions. The research is aimed at the second level of primary schools, secondary and secondary vocational schools. Schools in the regions as well as individual classes are selected by deliberate selection, based on the availability or willingness of the schools to participate in the research. Care is taken to ensure an equal representation of schools in terms of their size and the size of the city.

The questionnaire on risky behavior in adolescence (the author of the questionnaire is S. Pelcák from the Department of Social Pathology and Sociology, PdF UHK) was constructed on the basis of selected thematic publications (e.g. Kabíček, 2014; Sobotková, 2014). The questionnaire determines the severity of the occurrence of behavioral manifestations covered by SRCH-D:

  1. Truancy: unjustified absence from school, deliberate avoidance of exams, feigned sickness or illness, late arrival at school, early leaving school.
  2. Sexual behavior: premature intercourse, changing sexual partners, unprotected sex.
  3. Experiment with eating behavior and self-harm: holding diets, inducing vomiting, starvation, cutting, burning and self-mutilation behavior.
  4. Experimenting with classic substance addictions.
  5. Petty crime: disturbing the night after 10 p.m., destruction and damage to things or property, petty theft.
  6. Aggressive behavior: swearing, taunts and ironic remarks, humiliating and ridiculing others, aggressive behavior towards a family member/members, cruelty to animals, displays of hostility and aggression towards people of a different ethnicity or nationality.
  7. Risky sports and activities: e.g. parkour, climbing high-voltage poles, skating/skating behind a bus, etc.
  8. Behavioral addictions: PC gaming and resulting failure to fulfill obligations, inadequate spending of free time on social networks, playing and betting on slot machines, betting via the Internet, playing paid games. (Hoferková, Pelcák, 2015)

Answers are recorded on a five-point scale (1 = never, 5 = regularly), the period of the past calendar year is evaluated. The risk index is the result of the sum of values, which is divided by the number of SRCH-D manifestation items. Cronbach Alpha of the questionnaire is 0.779. IMB Statistics SPSS software was used for data processing. For the purposes of this contribution, only sub-items and contexts related to truancy were selected.

Research results

The results of the research concern a total of 654 respondents, of which 239 are boys (37%) and 415 are girls (63%; the disproportion between boys and girls in the research group reflects the actual gender representation in individual years of primary and secondary schools). The respondents were between the ages of 13 and 23, the average age was roughly 16 and a half years (16.66); young people between the ages of 15 and 17 prevailed (59.9%).

The following table (tab. 1) lists the items of the truancy index, with the calculated mean values. Respondents most often answered "never" (absence from school, avoiding exams) and "rarely" (arriving at school late and leaving school early) to items related to truancy.

Tab. 1: Items of truancy

The mutual correlation of the items of the truancy index showed that the relationships between the individual items of the entire index are significant (**p<0.01). Therefore, if a student has an unexcused absence from school, he often goes to school late, leaves school early and at the same time avoids exams. In this group of respondents there may be those who have problems with fulfilling their school or study obligations and therefore deliberately avoid school and its requirements. At the same time, however, they may be pupils and students who behave risky in other areas as well. If we look at the overall index of truancy (we average the results of the individual items that saturate this index), we find that the most common average answers were "never" (almost 47%) and "rarely" (42%); the answer "sometimes" occurred in 10% (tab. 2). The graphic representation of respondents' answers is shown in graph no. 1. The average value of the answers to the overall truancy index was 1.69, the standard deviation was 0.64.

Tab. 2: Average responses within the entire truancy index

Chart 1: Total truancy index

In our research group, gender had no effect on truancy. On the contrary, a correlation was measured between the age of the respondents and the entire truancy index (-5.476, ** p<0.001). With increasing age, the tendency to truant behavior decreases.

Furthermore, we investigated statistically significant dependencies between individual items of the entire questionnaire (tab. 3).

Tab. 3: Correlation of selected items of the entire risk behavior questionnaire

Explanations: N - Unexcused absence from school, KC - Smoking cigarettes, KA - Consumption of alcohol, KM - Smoking marijuana, G - Playing slot machines, KT - Consumption of dance drugs, AM - Destruction and damage to the property of classmates and the school, AZ - Humiliation and ridicule of others, A - Aggressive behavior towards others, R - Fights

From the point of view of truancy, it turns out that the item "unjustified absence from school" in particular was correlated with all other items of all indices of risky behavior, except excessive playing of computer games. The correlation of selected items, including the item Unexcused absence at school, is shown in Table X. In particular, correlations were found between absence and:

  • consumption of tobacco, alcohol, marijuana and dance drugs,
  • by playing slot machines,
  • aggressive and hostile behavior towards other people, fights, cruelty to animals and destruction of classmates' belongings and school property,
  • risky behavior associated with information and communication technologies, especially spending a lot of time (several hours in one day) on social networks, watching inappropriate sites on the Internet, betting via the Internet and playing paid computer games.

Conclusion

We can summarize that the issue of truancy in our sample is not very serious. Avoidance of exams and late arrival/early departure from school appear most often. An interesting result was that truancy is not conditioned by gender - girls "skip school" as often as boys. In our group, age proved to be significant, i.e. the older the pupil/student, the more often truant behavior occurs.

The results also revealed an interesting fact, namely that the truancy items are significantly correlated not only with themselves within the truancy index, but also with other items of the Adolescent Risky Behavior Questionnaire - that is, with the abuse of addictive substances (alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and dance drugs), with aggressive behavior towards people, animals and property, as well as with risky behavior associated with the use of information and communication technologies. We can therefore state that in our sample, truancy is not a frequent phenomenon, even if 10% of respondents admit that they sometimes commit it. Roughly 1% of respondents have a serious problem with truancy and avoiding school duties. So it seems that truancy occurs with other types of risky behavior, e.g. in connection with the syndrome of risky behavior in adolescence, and it is necessary to approach it in this way within the framework of prevention and intervention (cf. Pelcák, Hoferková, Bělík, 2015).

The mentioned contribution maps only one part of the problem of risky behavior. However, using statistical methods, it provides a qualified finding that very often truancy is not an isolated risk phenomenon. A teacher who works with adolescents should be aware of this, and his action should affect several sides of the personality (cognitive, conative and emotional), but also non-specifically affect a larger number of phenomena that may occur in an individual's life. Such an effort in the Czech environment is the introduction of the so-called framework of educational programs, school educational programs, cross-cutting topics and key competences (more, e.g. Šťastná, Hoferková, 2008; Hoferková, 2016).

Authors: Mgr. et Mgr. Stanislava Hoferková, Ph.D. The author works as an assistant professor at the Department of Social Pathology and Sociology, PdF UHK. It deals with the problem of risky behavior in the context of social pathology, etopedia and penology. PhDr. Václav Bělík, Ph.D. The author is the head of the Department of Social Pathology and Sociology PdF UHK. In the long term, he focuses mainly on the issue of prevention of risky behavior in the school environment and on the possibilities of professionalizing prevention. List of bibliographic references

HAMANOVÁ, Jana – KABÍČEK, Pavel. 2001. Risky behavior syndrome in adolescence. In Zdravotnické noviny. Medical letters. ISSN 1214-7664, 2001, L, 4, 38–40.

HOFERKOVÁ, Stanislava – PELCÁK, Stanislava. 2015. Future time perspective of pubescent. First edition. Hradec Králové: Gaudeamus, 2015. 153 p. ISBN 978-80-7435-630-8.

HOFERKOVÁ, Stanislava. 2016. Risky behavior of youth and the school counseling system. In Acta sociopathologica III. Ed. 1. Hradec Králové: Gaudeamus, 2016. ISBN 978-80-7435-637-7, p. 118–134.

KABÍČEK, Pavel et al. 2014. Risky behavior in adolescence and its relation to health. Ed. 1. Prague: Triton, 2014. 343 p. ISBN 978-80-7387-793-4.

KYRIACOU, Chris. 2005. Solving educational problems at school. Ed. 1. Prague: Portal, 2005. 151 p. ISBN 80-7178-945-3.

LAZAROVÁ, Bohumíra. 2008. The non-traditional role of the teacher: about situations of help, crisis and counseling in school practice. 2., edit. ed. Brno: Paido, 2008. 69 p. ISBN 978-80-7315-169-0.

Methodological recommendations for the primary prevention of risky behavior in children and youth: reference no. 21291/2010-28 [online]. MŠMT, © 2013 [cit. 2017-01-03]. Available online: http://www.msmt.cz/vzdelavani/socialni-programy/metodicke-dokumenty-doporuceni-a-pokyny

Methodical instruction for a uniform procedure for releasing and excusing pupils from classes, prevention and punishment of truancy: reference no. 10 194/2002 – 14 [online]. MŠMT, © 2002 [cit. 2017-01-05]. Available online: http://www.msmt.cz/vzdelavani/socialni-programy/metodicky-pokyn-ministerstva-skolstvi-mladeze-a-telovychovy-k-jednotnemu-postupu-pri-uvolnovani-a-omlouvani-zaku-z-vyucovani-prevenci-a-postihu-zaskolactvi-predkladaci-zprava-a-text-pokynu?highlightWords=z%C3%A1%C5%A1kol%C3%A1ctv%C3%AD

National strategy for the primary prevention of risky behavior of children and youth for the period 2013-2018 [online]. MŠMT, © 2013 [cit. 2017-01-17]. Available online: http://www.msmt.cz/vzdelavani/socialni-programy/strategie-a-koncepce-ap-msmt

PELCÁK, Stanislav – HOFERKOVÁ, Stanislava – BĚLÍK, Václav. 2015. Sense of cohesion and adherence to a healthy lifestyle in adolescents. In Lifelong Learning ISSN 1804-526X, 2015, 5, 2, p. 73-80.

SOBOTKOVÁ, Veronika et al. 2014. Risky and antisocial behavior in adolescence. Ed. 1. Prague: Grada, 2014. 147 p. ISBN 978-80-247-4042-3.

ŠŤASTNÁ, Jarmila – HOFERKOVÁ, Stanislava. 2008. Ethical education as a possibility to prevent socially pathological phenomena in children and youth. In BOLKOVÁ, Gabriela (ed.). Pedagogical evaluation 08: Proceedings from the conference with international participation held on September 18-19, 2008 in Malenovice. [CD-ROM] Ostrava: PdF OU, 2008. ISBN 978-80-7368-655-0.