Personal Characteristics, Job Performance, and Absenteeism of Public School Teachers1

Personal characteristics and job performance were examined as potential predictors of absenteeism for a professional occupational group. Data on 152 public school teachers demonstrated that sex and independence contributed unique variance to the prediction of absenteeism. Furthermore, the interaction terms of sex with independence, with the ability to control anxiety, and with performance rating significantly added to the variance explained in absenteeism. Implications of the present results are discussed as well as suggestions for future research.