Does Exposure to High Job Demands, Low Decision Authority, or Workplace Violence Mediate the Association between Employment in the Health and Social Care Industry and Register-Based Sickness Absence? A Longitudinal Study of a Swedish Cohort

Anna Nyberg, Paraskevi Peristera, Susanna Toivanen and Gun Johansson
Additional contact information
Anna Nyberg: Department of Public Health and Caring Sciences, Uppsala University, P.O. Box 564, SE-751 22 Uppsala, Sweden
Paraskevi Peristera: Department of Psychology, Stress Research Institute, Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
Susanna Toivanen: School of Health, Care and Social Welfare, Mälardalen University, P.O. Box 883, SE-721 23 Vasteras, Sweden
Gun Johansson: Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, SE-113 65 Stockholm, Sweden

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 19, issue 1, 1-14

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.

Keywords: structural equation model; multilevel model; mediation model; indirect effect; industry level (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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