FREQUENCY AND DURATION OF ABSENCE FROM WORK AS FUNCTIONS OF WORK-FORCE CHARACTERISTICS

The processes of sick-leave inception and work resumption are governed by many interrelated factors. Hence conventional univariate models of these processes do not provide an adequate basis for explanation and prediction. In this study, multivariate models were used to fit absent eeism data for a large government department. The variables considered were the age, sex, and grade of the employees concerned; the day, mon th, and year of inception of sick leave or resumption of work; the sec tion in which the employees worked and the size of that section. The m odels were used to predict the rates of sick-leave inception and work resumption in a test set of employees. The predicted inception rates a ppear to agree well with the observed values.