Workplace mistreatment and sickness absenteeism from work: results from the 2010 National Health Interview survey.
OBJECTIVE
This study examined the association between workplace mistreatment and occurrence, duration, and costs of sickness absenteeism.


METHODS
We used the 2010 National Health Interview Survey and considered 13,807 employed adult respondents. We used a zero-inflated negative binomial (zinb) model to examine the association between exposure to workplace mistreatment and the occurrence and number of workdays missed due to illness/injury in the preceding 12 months.


RESULTS
In 2010, 7.6% of US workers employed at the time of the survey reported having been mistreated at their workplace. Both occurrence and duration of sickness absence were higher for mistreated than for non-mistreated workers. The zinb results showed that being mistreated was associated with a 42% increase in the number of missed workdays, controlling for covariates. The marginal effect analysis showed that lost workdays differed by 2.45 days between mistreated and non-mistreated workers. This implies that workplace mistreatment was associated with $4.1 billion, or 5.5%, of sickness absenteeism costs in 2010.


CONCLUSIONS
Workplace mistreatment is associated with sickness absence in the United States. While a causal relationship could not be established due to the cross-sectional design of the study, this study reveals the economic importance of developing workplace mistreatment prevention strategies.
['Asfaw|Abay G|AG|', 'Chang|Chia C|CC|', 'Ray|Tapas K|TK|']
D000041:Absenteeism D000328:Adult D058445:Bullying D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies D005260:Female D006304:Health Status D006801:Humans D007221:Industry D008297:Male D008875:Middle Aged D018582:Sick Leave D012919:Social Behavior D012934:Social Isolation D013223:Statistics as Topic D013315:Stress, Psychological D014481:United States D017132:Workplace
workplace mistreatment sickness absenteeism NHIS count data models