Social factors influencing absenteeism due to illness in nursery school children.

An archival study involving data for 204 children enrolled in a nursery school examined social and other factors related to absenteeism from school due to reported illness. Parents' ratings of the child's sociability prior to entering school were inversely related to absenteeism rate during the first year of school after statistically controlling for socioeconomic class, birth order, sex, the child's early health history, and family and sibling interaction patterns. Additional analyses based on a subset of the sample indicated that teachers' perceptions of the children's sociability were also related to absentee rates (but not to parents' sociability ratings).