Perceived legitimacies of health-related and motivational presenteeism and absenteeism: Development and validation of the Workplace Attendance Behavior Legitimacy Scale

Workplace attendance behaviors (WABs), that is, absenteeism and presenteeism, are important to both organizations and individuals. Yet, despite growing knowledge on their formation and ongoing calls for its exploration, research on how the legitimacy of WAB impacts attendance decisions is missing. We contribute by providing researchers with the Workplace Attendance Behavior Legitimacy Scale (WABLS), a reliable, valid, and economical measure validated in English and German, across five samples. WABLS includes 12 items that measure the personal norms of attending work via three dimensions that emerged across Studies 1A, 1B, and 2, namely, the respective legitimacies of working in the state of ill-health (sickness presenteeism), working despite a lack of motivation (motivational presenteeism), and not working due to a lack of motivation (motivational absenteeism). We find that WABLS exhibits good internal consistency, test-retest reliability, discriminant and criterion-related validity, and longitudinal and cross-lingual measurement invariance (Study 3). We discuss theoretical implications for attendance legitimacy as well as opportunities for the future use of WABLS.