The Many Faces of Absenteeism: Issues in the Methodology of Absence Event Studies

This chapter IS concerned with the methodological issues that underlie the operationalization and measurement of absenteeism, As such it sets the stage for the paper by Hotz and Avery (Chapter 5) who consider the specification and estimation of models of absenteeism, That is. the present chapter considers the characterization of the absence variable. while Hotz and Avery address the problems of how to build causal models of absenteeism and how to estimate the relative effects of the various explanatory variables Both the present paper and the Hotz and A very paper follow from the theoretical framework developed by Fichman (Chapter 2). although both develop concepts somewhat independent of the specifics of Fichman.