Teachers' acceptance of absenteeism: Towards developing a specific scale

Purpose: This study aims to develop and validate a measure of a specific attitude toward teachers' absenteeism that predicts this behavior more accurately than other general measures of job attitudes. Design/methodology/approach: Participants were 443 teachers from 21 secondary schools in Israel. In the first phase, the teachers answered anonymous questionnaires related to their general attitudes and their specific attitude through "absenteeism acceptance". In the second phase, each teacher submitted copies of his half-year absenteeism records six months after the end of the first phase. Findings: The authors used CFA to cross-validate the different job attitudes measures. They confirmed the construct validity of "absenteeism acceptance" through convergent and discriminant validity, finding relatively weak negative relationships between "absenteeism acceptance" and the general job attitudes. The criterion validity and predictive validity of the new measure was confirmed by intercorrelations that were found to be relatively stronger between "absenteeism acceptance" and the two measures of absenteeism (frequency, duration) than between the general job attitudes and these two measures. Quasi-Possion regressions indicated that "absenteeism acceptance" emerges as a better predictor for both of the absenteeism measures than other general job attitudes. Practical implications: This new measure will benefit schools and principals by allowing them to identify potential absenteeism antecedents and enable early intervention. Originality/value: Whereas past research on work absence focused primarily on general attitude antecedents, the present study addresses a specific "absenteeism acceptance" measure. This measure can be advantageous in both understanding and predicting voluntary absenteeism more accurately than general attitude measures.