Thesis (Ph.D.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Instructional Systems, Leadership, and Workforce Development. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Studiens syfte är att förstå hur några skolprojekt har arbetat för att främja skolnärvaro för elever inom autismspektrumtillstånd. Som metod användes kvalitativa intervjuer med åtta informanter i fem kommuner som på något sätt arbetar med skolprojekt med fokus på inkludering och skolfrånvaro. Informanterna som deltog i studien var tre specialpedagoger, en speciallärare, två rektorer, en kurator och en rådgivare från specialpedagogiska skolmyndigheten. De fem skolprojekten som informanterna arbetade med, omfattade 137 skolor i Sverige. Ett projekt var inriktat mot det förebyggande arbetet att skapa en tillgänglig skola för elever inom autismspektrumtillstånd. Fyra projekt utgick både från förebyggande insatser och att få tillbaka elever med hög skolfrånvaro till skolan. Resultatet visade på att det behövs mer kunskap om autism för att skapa en skola som är tillgänglig för elever inom autismspektrumtillstånd. Det behövs kartläggning av elevens behov, anpassad lärmiljö och social träning. Stort fokus behöver läggas på skapandet av relation och bemötande av elev och problematik. Projekten har upprättat handlingsplaner för att uppmärksamma skolfrånvaro i ett tidigt skede. På så vis kan orsak till frånvaro snabbare utredas och åtgärdas vilket besparar eleven mycket lidande. Det som genomsyrar arbetet är hur kunskap och samverkan mellan olika samverkanspartner kan främja skolnärvaro. / The study aims to understand how some school project has worked to promote school attendance for students with autism spectrum disorders. The applied method for this study is qualitative interviews and eight people have been interviewed from five different municipalities, all involved in school projects focusing on inclusion and absenteeism. Three of the informants that participated in the study were special pedagogues, one was a specialneeds teacher, two were principals, one was a counselor, and one was an adviser at Specialpedagogiska skolmyndigheten (The Authority of Special Needs Education). The five projects that the informants were involved in covered 137 schools in Sweden. One of the projects was focused on preventive measures to create a school accessible for students with autism related difficulties. Four projects aimed to both prevent students from being absent from school and for absentees to return to school. The results shows that schools need more knowledge about autism related difficulties in order to create a school that is accessible for these students. First, schools need better routines for assessing students’ needs, second the learning environment in the classroom must be adapted more efficiently for students with autism related difficulties and their needs, and last the students must be given the chance to work on their social skills. The focus must be on building relationships to the students. This in order to meet the students’ needs so that measures taken will be beneficial for the students.The schools in the study have written routines in order to detect absenteeism at an early stamge. These routines aim to identify the reason for absenteeism early on and quickly find measures to support the student and spare them a lot of suffering. Success factors in this work is how knowledge and collaboration between different interaction partners can promote school attendance.

Despite a multi-disciplinary, international literature, little research has drawn attention to the phenomenon of school refusal within the school. Most research on school refusal follows a positivist paradigm, focusing on the student, instead of examining the role of schools. Using a qualitative design and a social constructionist framework, this study explored how school personnel perceive school refusal, focusing on the social interactions, processes, and perceptions that construct their understanding. The study was conducted in a large school district in the Southeastern United States.Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with school personnel at the middle school (N=42), high school (N=40), and district level (N=10). Interviews at the school level included assistant principals, school psychologists, social workers, health services staff, guidance counselors, teachers, attendance office staff, and school resource officers. The district level interviews included personnel in departments related to guidance, psychology, school health services, and social work. Observational data was collected within the schools selected for interviews (N=10). Thirty-eight out of 68 middle and high school principals in the school district completed the Survey of School Refusal.Findings suggest that school personnel rarely use the terminology set forth by the professional literature to describe the spectrum of school refusal. Further, analysis revealed that personnel delineate students who refuse school according to their own categorizations formed through day-to-day experiences with students. Personnel's constructions of school refusal differed based on legitimacy of the reason for refusal, motivation for refusal, grade level, and barriers, which were physical, mental, emotional, social, and societal in nature. Overarching dynamics of typifications of students included parental control, parental awareness, student locus of control, blame, and victim status. These typifications influence how personnel react to students they encounter, particularly in deciding who needs help versus punishment presenting very real implications for students.The findings from this exploratory qualitative study make a significant contribution to this literature. The findings support the use of social constructionism in understanding school personnel's construction of school refusal. Implications for education, public health, and school health practice are presented and include recommendations for policy, training, prevention, early intervention, and future research.

Background and purpose: The main goal was to examine which factors in the psychosocial work environment that would predict turnover intention among engineering employees in a larger global company within the oil and gas industry. The second goal was to examine if the predictors would differ for employees under the age of 40, compared to employees over the age of 40. Method: Data was collected using a self-reported electronic questionnaire designed by Mille Myhre and myself. The analyses included three control variables and seven independent variables, which also encompassed a new aspect of the psychosocial work environment research in relation to turnover intention, namely the personal resources optimism and selfefficacy. The questionnaire was distributed through an e-mail sent from the Vice President HSE, and a sample of 128 participants was used in the analyses conducted in SPSS. Key findings: The predictors were job satisfaction, leadership and sickness absenteeism, and were found to have different rank of importance for the employees in the two age groups, regarding the predictor’s beta value. Optimism and self-efficacy were not found as predictors of turnover intention in the current sample. Conclusion: To manage the employee’s turnover intention the leaders should focus on the employee’s satisfaction with their work, keeping a high qualitative transactional leadership and be observant to the employee’s sickness absenteeism, but control for the employee’s age if they were to initiate actions to control for turnover intention.

The purpose of the study is to determine whether absenteeism is a real concern amongst the educators in South African schools. Although there are sufficient and appropriate policies in place, the rate of absenteeism is on the increase on a daily basis. Through the literature and investigations, the study tries to unravel the causes of absenteeism and the solutions thereof. The study revealed that 66% of the educators abused the current leave policy. Great majority (64%) of the educators were in favour of the introduction of some form of incentives and seventy eight percent of the educators wanted the re-introduction of the accumulation of leave policy. Eighty four percent of the respondents also agreed that teacher absenteeism contributes to poor learner performance. Workload of educators was not a major contributing factor in the high rate of teacher absenteeism. Some of the reasons attributed to absenteeism are depression, redeployment, ill health, lack of motivation and self esteem, low salary, demoralizing learners and poor working conditions. All levels of educators suggested solutions to this ever-increasing problem, which is becoming difficult to manage. Recognition of least absenteeism, effective implementation of the policy, strong management team, motivating the staff, offering fringe benefits, organizing workshops to manage absenteeism and to equip educators and building team work are some of the noticeable and common solutions suggested by all levels of educators. The study recommends the re-introduction of accumulation of leave policy and linking the school database of educators with departmental database so that on a daily basis the leave statistics can be l:Jpdated and appropriate actions effected with out delay. / (MBA) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2006

Bakgrund: Skolfrånvaro är ett komplext område och som kan betraktas som ett folkhälsoproblem då det är en riskfaktor för framtida utanförskap. En ofullständig skolgång försvårar ett aktivt deltagande i arbets- och samhällsliv vilket ökar risken för framtida ohälsa. Riskfaktorer för hög skolfrånvaro finns på individ-, familj-, skol- och samhällsnivå. Dessa riskfaktorer interagerar med varandra och har en kumulativ effekt. Goda relationer inom och mellan dessa nivåer beskrivs som skyddsfaktorer för hög skolfrånvaro.Syfte: Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka hypotesen om att det fanns en skillnad mellan gruppen med skolfrånvaro och gruppen utan skolfrånvaro avseende familjestruktur, sociala relationer och delaktighet hos elever i Värmland.Metod: Metoden var en kvantitativ empirisk studie av elevdata i Elevhälsodatabasen ELSA. Sambandsanalyser mellan utfallsvariabeln skolfrånvaro och sociodemografi, sociala relationer och delaktighet analyserades med sambandstestet Chi2, Pearsons r på 95% nivån.Resultat: Resultaten visade att det fanns skillnader beträffande familjestruktur mellan elevgruppen med skolfrånvaro och gruppen utan skolfrånvaro. Elever med skolfrånvaro bor i betydligt mindre utsträckning i en sammanhållen familj med båda föräldrarna. Resultaten visade också på samband mellan sociala relationer och skolfrånvaro. Elever med skolfrånvaro trivdes i mindre omfattning bra hemma och hade färre vuxna att prata med jämfört med elever utan skolfrånvaro. De upplevde också lägre grad av trygghet, trivsel och vänligt bemötande i skolan och hade i större utsträckning blivit rädda då någon gjort dem illa. Äldre elever med skolfrånvaro upplevde mindre delaktighet och att bli lyssnad till i skolan än elever utan skolfrånvaro.Konklusion: I skolan behövs en ökad förståelse för att elever med hög skolfrånvaro är ”elever i svårigheter” istället för ”elever med svårigheter” där elevhälsans kompetens inom det psykosociala området kan användas på individ-, grupp- och organisationsnivå. / Background: School absence is a complex issue that can be considered as a public health problem as it is a risk factor for future exclusion. An incomplete schooling makes it harder for an active participation in working and social life, which in turn increases the risk of ill health. There are risk factors for high school absenteeism at the individual-, family-, school- and community level. These risk factors interact with each other and have a cumulative effect. Good relationships within and between these levels are protective factors for high school absenteeism.Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the hypothesis that there was a difference between the group with school absenteeism and the group without school absenteeism in family structure, social relationships and participation among students in VärmlandMethod: The method was a quantitative empirical study of student-data in the student health database ELSA. Correlation analyzes between the school absenteeism and sociodemographics, social relationships and involvement were analyzed with a Chi2 test , Pearson's r on the 95 % level .Results : The results showed that there were differences in family structure between the group of students with school absenteeism compared to the group without school absenteeism. Students with school absenteeism lived to a significantly less extent in a cohesive family with both parents. The results also showed a correlation between social relationships and school absences. Students with school absenteeism felt less comfortable at home and had fewer adults to talk to compared to students without school absenteeism. They also experienced lower levels of security, comfort and friendly treatment in the school and had to a higher frequency become afraid when someone treated them badly. Older students with school absenteeism did not feel participation or that they were listened to in school at the same rate as students without school absenteeism.Conclusion: The school needs a better understanding that students with high absenteeism is "students in difficulty " and not "students with difficulties " where student health service competence in the psychosocial field may be used at individual, group and organizational levels.

Technological advances and mechanization have reduced physical activity levels. Lifestyle in general has become more and more physically inactive. This sedentary lifestyle can lead to the development of hypokinetic diseases which inter alia include risk factors for the development of coronary heart disease. The consequences are a variety of health risk factors that can contribute to heart disease, stroke and mortality. If left unattended, these risk factors can lead to ill health and reduced productivity. Ill health in the corporate sector can lead to presenteeism, absenteeism, high health care costs and reduced productivity. The purpose of this study was to analyze the profiles of physical activity- (PAI), health status- (HSI), lifestyle- (LSI) and coronary risk indexes (CRI) among employees in a financial institution in order to evaluate the impact of physical activity. The research sample includes 475 employees (159 male and 316 female) with a mean age of 35.8 ± 8.6 and 35.1 ± 8.5 for the male and female groups respectively, divided into three age groups ≤35, 36-45 and ≥ 46 years. Results indicated that the majority of the employees were physically inactive and falling in moderate to poor category in terms of health status, lifestyle habits and coronary heart disease risk. The lifestyle index of the older males (≥ 46) was significantly better than those of the younger males. Results also indicated that coronary heart disease risk, lifestyle and health status improve as physical activity levels improve. The lifestyle index of males and females were significantly better among the physical active group. The finding suggest the need for employers and employees to prevent hypokinetic disorders which can cause “presenteeism” which may result in reduced productivity and increased health care costs. The literature also indicate the need for companies to measure and keep track of the health risk profile of their staff, since employees can migrate between low, moderate and high risk categories annually. / Thesis (M.A. (Human Movement Science))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Technological advances and mechanization have reduced physical activity levels. Lifestyle in general has become more and more physically inactive. This sedentary lifestyle can lead to the development of hypokinetic diseases which inter alia include risk factors for the development of coronary heart disease. The consequences are a variety of health risk factors that can contribute to heart disease, stroke and mortality. If left unattended, these risk factors can lead to ill health and reduced productivity. Ill health in the corporate sector can lead to presenteeism, absenteeism, high health care costs and reduced productivity. The purpose of this study was to analyze the profiles of physical activity- (PAI), health status- (HSI), lifestyle- (LSI) and coronary risk indexes (CRI) among employees in a financial institution in order to evaluate the impact of physical activity. The research sample includes 475 employees (159 male and 316 female) with a mean age of 35.8 ± 8.6 and 35.1 ± 8.5 for the male and female groups respectively, divided into three age groups ≤35, 36-45 and ≥ 46 years. Results indicated that the majority of the employees were physically inactive and falling in moderate to poor category in terms of health status, lifestyle habits and coronary heart disease risk. The lifestyle index of the older males (≥ 46) was significantly better than those of the younger males. Results also indicated that coronary heart disease risk, lifestyle and health status improve as physical activity levels improve. The lifestyle index of males and females were significantly better among the physical active group. The finding suggest the need for employers and employees to prevent hypokinetic disorders which can cause “presenteeism” which may result in reduced productivity and increased health care costs. The literature also indicate the need for companies to measure and keep track of the health risk profile of their staff, since employees can migrate between low, moderate and high risk categories annually. / Thesis (M.A. (Human Movement Science))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Problems that face teachers, especially those in secondary schools, are discussed. How they have developed over the years to what is now considered to be a crisis level, the increase in absenteeism and illness of the teaching force are also reviewed. A review of existing material explains the nature of stress. The psychobiological aspects are reviewed paying particular attention to the many coping mechanisms that the person will employ and explains how perceptions of situations can play a vital role. Factors that create stress for the teacher are discussed and categorised into familiar sections including pupils, working conditions, working in an organisation, the effects of management, the self concept and role conflict. Selection, training, assessment, pay and promotion are dealt with together in an additional category. Results from a Questionnaire completed by teachers from four local education authorities provides additional material to be considered and reinforces many of the previous claims and observations. After the findings are discussed, conclusions and recommendations are made for the improvement of morale and the reduction of stress in the teaching profession. Many of the conclusions made are linked closely to the self concept of the teacher. This self concept appears to be the focal point at which the problems besetting the teacher meet and are dealt with in either a positive or negative manner. Many of the recommendations made have the effect on the self concept of the teacher as a prominent feature. The stress provoking situations experienced by teachers seem to be reaching unacceptable levels. The physical and mental welfare of teachers is called upon to be monitored in order to reduce the harmful effects that poorly motivated teachers may have on pupils and in order to reduce the physical and mental difficulties apparently being suffered by the teaching profession.

The overriding theme of my dissertation is the use of short-term weather fluctuations to study how people allocate their time across activities. In Chapter 1, a theoretical model is developed to distinguish malfeasant from legitimate forms of employee sickness absenteeism. In this model, individuals' marginal utility of indoor leisure is increasing in their sickness levels, while their marginal utility of outdoor leisure is an increasing function of the interaction of their health and the quality of outdoor weather. In equilibrium, sickness absenteeism occurs at both ends of the sickness distribution -- among the relatively sick and among the most healthy facing the best weather. The positive relation between marginal changes in weather quality and levels of sickness absenteeism in the workplace reflects the substitution of the inframarginal employees who are the least sick away from work activities towards outdoor leisure activities. The model in Chapter 1 suggests an empirical strategy to identify a shirking component in overall reported sickness absenteeism. Not only does this approach avoid attributing entirely legitimate forms of absenteeism to shirking, but unlike previous studies using employee dismissal rates, it is able to distinguish shirking activity whether or not that activity is detected by employers. In order to exploit exogenous weather fluctuations to identify shirking activity, we need a one-dimensional measure of weather “quality”. The primary objective of Chapter 2 is to construct a weather quality index that captures the influence of the weather on workers' preferences for outdoor leisure activity. The weather quality index takes into account the multifaceted nature of weather conditions, and measures how various weather elements -- temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind speed, and cloud cover -- come together to affect the propensity of employees to engage in high-utility outdoor recreational activities. The resulting index provides a ranking of different weather conditions in terms of their outdoor recreational values, which can then be used to capture the incentives of employees to shirk contractual work hours in response to purely exogenous weather changes. Chapter 3 empirically tests the existence of weather-induced substitution between work and outdoor leisure activities and examines how this type of behaviour varies across workers facing different shirking incentives. Linking 12 years of employee data from Canada's monthly Labour Force Survey (LFS), which queries reasons for employees' absences, to weather quality measured using the index constructed in Chapter 2, a clear positive relationship is found between the quality of outside weather conditions and short-term reported sickness absenteeism. Moreover, consistent with a key proposition of the theoretical model in Chapter 1, the empirical relation between weather and sickness absenteeism tends to be larger when existing shirking incentives are low, such as when sick pay is less generous and when probability of getting fired if caught shirking is high. There is, however, little evidence that firms are able to adjust shirking incentives through the payment of efficiency wages. Finally, Chapter 4 examines another type of substitution induced by weather shocks -- the substitution between outdoor and indoor physical activities. The Chapter begins with a theoretical model of the decision to participate in physical activities, which assumes that when adverse weather shocks deter outdoor physical activities, indoor physical activities are the only viable option for individuals to stay physically active. However, because the indoor options are more costly, substituting from outdoor to indoor physical activities is easier for higher-income individuals. This suggests an explanation for the stylized fact that rates of physical activity participation are low among lower socioeconomic groups. Linking time-use data from Canadian General Social Survey with archival weather data, the results of the empirical analysis in this chapter provides evidence of a positive income effect enabling substitution from outdoor to indoor physical activities when outside weather is not conducive for participating in outdoor activities. By exploiting the role that income plays in maintaining physical activity levels when less costly outdoor options are limited, this chapter formally illustrates a credible causal link between people's income levels and their participation in leisure time physical activities and provides direct evidence of this link. The results have important policy implications for promoting physical activities, especially among lower income population.