Absenteeism is a serious employment problem in most countries. It is estimated that absenteeism reduces potential output by more than 10%. Two economists launched a research project to learn more about the problem. They randomly selected 100 organizations to participate in a 1-year study. For each organization, they recorded the average number of days absent per employee and several variables thought to affect absenteeism. The following data were recorded:

Column 1: Average number of days absent per employee

Column 2: Average employee wage

Column 3: Percentage of part-time employees

Column 4: Percentage of unionized employees

Column 5: Availability of shiftwork (1 = yes; 0 = no)

Column 6: Union–management relationship (1 = good; 0 = not good)

a. Conduct a regression analysis.

b. Can we infer at the 5% significance level that the availability of shift work is related to absenteeism?

c. Is there enough evidence at the 5% significance level to infer that in organizations where the union–management relationship is good, absenteeism is lower?

(The authors are grateful to James Fong and Diana Mansour for developing this exercise.)