ArticleThe Journal of school health2026
Beyond Medical Absence: Grade-Related and Year-To-Year Persistent Patterns of Parent-Reported Psychological/Functional Absence in Routine School Attendance Records.
Article in The Journal of school health, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPsychological/functional absences may be obscured within broad medical leave categories in routine attendance records. This study examined whether parent-reported psychological/functional absence is patterned and persistent in a Chinese secondary school context.
methodsWe analyzed retrospective attendance records from 2183 students and 26,092 absence events across the 2022-2025 academic years. Parent-reported reasons were coded into 8 categories. Event-level logistic regression with student-clustered robust standard errors examined associations with grade, sex, cohort, academic year, and month; student-year lagged models examined recurrence.
resultsPsychological/functional absence accounted for 5179 events (19.8%). In the fully adjusted event-level model, Grade 11 students had higher odds of psychological/functional absence than Grade 8 students (OR = 2.62, 95% CI [1.45, 4.72], p = 0.001). Prior-year psychological/functional absence predicted current-year occurrence (OR = 3.50, 95% CI [2.67, 4.59], p < 0.001), and prior-year count predicted current-year count (IRR = 1.06, 95% CI [1.04, 1.07], p < 0.001) IMPLICATIONS FOR SCHOOL HEALTH POLICY, PRACTICE, AND EQUITY: Repeated psychological/functional absences may help schools identify students needing timely, non-punitive follow-up.
conclusionsPsychological/functional absence appears to be a recurring administrative signal, but should not be interpreted as a clinical diagnosis.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.