Attendance of the Company's Employees

In a recent company that I worked for, part of my job responsibilities were to track attendance of the company's employee's. On one particular day 3 non-salary employees's called in sick to work and 8 salary people called out sick to work. I thought it was interesting to have such a big difference in salary and non-salary absences so I decided to test a theory.

The informal research method that I used was random observation. Over the next several days I paid very close attention to the employee's that were absent from work. My informal research method helped with my theory but it was not concrete enough.

My research method was similar to research methods used by psychologists in several ways. First I developed a theory that individuals will be absent from work, but people that are salary will be absent from work more than people who are non-salary because it will not negatively affect their paychecks. Next, I created a hypothesis that individuals who are paid on salary will be absent from work more than people who are non-salary. Finally, I created an operational definition so my hypothesis could be measured and observed. Also, I used archival research to test my theory. I went back through the company's attendance records for 6 months to test my theory. If given another opportunity to test my theory I would not only test the absences of salary employee's verses non-salary employee's but I would test the reasons that they were absent. Are individuals missing work because they are sick, personal reasons, vacation days, etc..?

I enjoyed testing my theory and in the end I found out that salary employees were absent from work more than non-salary employee's. This led me to believe that it was because salary employee's paychecks are not affected if they miss work. Their pay continues whether they are at work or not.