Social Factors Contributing to Sickness Absence

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Many different perspectives can be useful in studies that try to explain the size and variation of a complex phenomenon such as sickness absence. Our aim is to contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon by using a cultural perspective, i.e., focusi ng on people as cultural and social beings. Accordingly, we shall not try to draw objective conclusions but shall instead attempt to understand how people interpret both themselves and their situations. Moreover, as people create and are created by the so ciety, the knowledge we shall present is "the social construction of reality". Our project will, therefore, focus on sickness and sickness absence as social phenomena. We have designed the project to grasp the impact of social and cultural factors. It is important, then, to have a comparative study that can illuminate some of our own implicit common attitudes. The social construction of people's identities as sickness absentees is dependent on "the others" perceptions of our situation. We have chosen the two largest groups of diagnoses in the statistics for sick leave. These groups also include diagnoses that induce negative reactions from the social environment (mental-health problems), diagnoses that people accept easily (as observable back or arm prob lems), and diagnoses that people question (like diffuse muscle pains). We argue that the individual's interpretation of his or her situation along with reactions from the social environment will influence the course of sick leave. Our aim is to understand the dynamics and the consequences of this interpretative process. We believe that this study will substantially contribute to the vital issue of how decision-makers and society as a whole can deal with sickness absence and will supplement studies based on large nation-wide data sets.