‘Some 700,000 people phone in sick on a Monday morning. One in three are faking it’ (Channel 5, 2002, UK Undercover, ‘Throwing a sickie’). These bare facts raise more questions:

for example, what kinds of people ‘throw a sickie’? Is it mainly those who are in stressful, repetitive, routine work, or professional workers? Is it because they feel that they are not given enough holiday entitlement? How would you investigate the reasons behind this behaviour?