0000000000602902

AUTHOR

Jaana Pentti

Sense of coherence as a mediator between hostility and health

Abstract Objective: We proposed and tested a model in which low sense of coherence (SOC) was hypothesized to underlie the association between hostility and health problems. Methods: Structural equation modeling was based on cross-lagged 7-year follow-up data, relating to five measurement points in 433 female municipal employees. Results: The mediated model fitted well with the data. After adjustment for baseline characteristics, hostility was associated with increased risk of health problems, as indicated by records of sickness absences and poor self-rated health. Incorporating SOC into the model attenuated this association by 33–50%, depending on the indicator of health. The mediated effec…

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The Role of Work Group in Individual Sickness Absence Behavior

The purpose of our two-year follow-up study was to examine the effect of the social components of the work group, such as group absence norms and cohesion, on sickness absence behavior among individuals with varying attitudes toward work attendance. The social components were measured using a questionnaire survey, and data on sickness absence behavior were collected from the employers' records. The study population consisted of 19,306 Finnish municipal employees working in 1,847 groups (78% women). Multilevel Poisson regression modeling was applied. The direct effects of work group characteristics on sickness absence were mostly insignificant. In contrast, both of the social components of …

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Organizational justice, sickness absence and employee age

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to study age-related differences in how perceptions of two forms of organizational justice, i.e. procedural and interactional justice, are related to short (i.e. non-certified) spells and long (i.e. medically certified) spells of sickness absence. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a study on a large sample of Finnish public sector employees (n=37,324), in which they matched employees' 2004 survey data with their records-based sick absences in 2005 and 2006. Findings – The results suggest that age moderates the association between perceptions of procedural justice and long sickness absences after controlling for gender, tenure, occupationa…

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