Measuring absence cultures: an examination of absence perceptions of males and females

Absenteeism was explored from a social psychological perspective. The purpose was to measure the absence cultures (Nicholson and Johns, l9S5) of male and female employees through the use of policy capturing (Hobson and Gibson, l9S3). Absence was split into three dimensions: Personal Health, Stress Relief, and Family Responsibility (Nicholson and Payne, l9S7). One hundred and two employees of a large southeastern university were used as subjects. They were asked to give their own opinion and their opinion of their organization's view about the inappropriateness/appropriateness of the absence behaviors in the 27 policy capturing vignettes. They were also asked to give their subjective weighting of how they used each dimension to make their overall rating.