Citation

Nyberg A, Peristera P, Toivanen S, Johansson G. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022; 19(1): e53.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph19010053

PMID

35010313

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The aim of this paper was to investigate if job demands, decision authority, and workplace violence mediate the association between employment in the health and social care industry and register-based sickness absence.

METHODS: Participants from the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health who responded to questionnaires in 2006-2016 (n = 3951) were included. Multilevel autoregressive cross-lagged mediation models were fitted to the data. Employment in the health and social care industry at one time point was used as the predictor variable and register-based sickness absence >14 days as the outcome variable. Self-reported levels of job demands, decision authority, and exposure to workplace violence from the first time point were used as mediating variables.

RESULTS: The direct path between employment in the health and social care industry and sickness absence >14 days was, while adjusting for the reverse path, 0.032, p = 0.002. The indirect effect mediated by low decision authority was 0.002, p = 0.006 and the one mediated by exposure to workplace violence was 0.008, p = 0.002. High job demands were not found to mediate the association.

CONCLUSION: Workplace violence and low decision authority may, to a small extent, mediate the association between employment in the health and social care industry and sickness absence.

Language: en

Keywords

structural equation model; indirect effect; industry level; mediation model; multilevel model