INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS IN SICKNESS ABSENCE, (REPRINTED FROM BRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL MEDICINE, VOL 24, PG 169-177, 1967)

Records of personal sickness absence, including all spells of one day' s duration or more, have been kept at this refinery for more than 20 y ears, The distributions of sickness spells and also calendar days of a bsence have been analysed for single years and also for periods of up to 20 years' continuous service for the 1,350 hourly paid male employe es. It is shown that both these measures of sickness absence are distr ibuted among the men in an unequal fashion (negative binomial) rather than at random (Poisson) and thus resemble the distribution of industr ial accidents first described almost 50 years ago. This pattern of dis tribution is not related to occupation or to length of service. Analys is of the distribution of lateness and absenteeism for reasons other t han sickness or holidays shows that these also follow this pattern. It is postulated that this could be a principle applicable to all forms of industrial absenteeism as well as to accidents. The personal record s of 187 men with continuous service from 1946 to 1965 have been studi ed to investigate the trends in their sickness absence over this 20-ye ar period. In contrast to the well-recognized pattern that in any one period of time young men have more spells of absence than their older fellows, this secular study shows that sickness spells have not decrea sed with age. This apparent paradox is explicable by the rising nation al trend in sickness absence and by a high labour turnover in young me n with frequent sickness spells.