A POLICY-CAPTURING APPROACH TO INDIVIDUALS DECISIONS TO BE ABSENT

This study provided a within-subjects assessment of the factors associated with an individual's decision to be absent and examined whether there were differences between individuals in their decisions. A sample of maintenance and clerical employees at a large Midwest university responded to hypothetical scenarios describing factors that might contribute to their decisions to be absent on a particular day. Illness explained more variance than any other factor in individual's absence decisions. Several other within-subject and between-subject influences were identified. Results from a cluster analysis suggested that the importance of these factors differed between subgroups of individuals, lending support to Johns and Nicholson's (1982) argument that the meaning of absence is not the same for all individuals. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.