Potent psychosocial risk factors associated with future sick absenteeism were identified. Because the total score was related to outcome, the instrument may have use in screening patients with acute or subacute spinal pain in clinical situations.

Taken together, these data indicate that spinal pain is common among 35-45-year-old men and-women, and that it is related to marked problems for approximately one fourth of those who experience pain. Gender differences exist in the pattern of sick leave and health care use, and a small proportion of those with pain consume very large amounts of the resources. Consequently, there is a need for early, effective, preventive treatments.

In current research, the extensive family policies of the Scandinavian countries have been problematized and described as hampering women's careers. However, mechanisms have been little investigated and the Scandinavian countries are often regarded as a single policy model. Based on an account of institutional variety we study gender gaps in hourly wages and access to authority positions in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and explore the importance of segregation, skills and work interruptions. The analysis uses pooled cross-sectional data from the European Social Survey (ESS) for 2004 and 2010. The results show that gender gaps vary both in size and regarding the mechanisms producing them. In particular, we find that gender segregation has a radically different impact in the four countries. The analysis suggests that the mechanisms linking family policies to labour market outcomes are more complex than envisaged in the current debate and point to the importance of comparing seemingly similar countries.

No abstract

Adding to the debate on the integrative or marginalizing nature of female part-time work, this article provides a comparative analysis of the implications of female part-time work for different intrinsic job quality dimensions and job satisfaction. Drawing on national micro-data from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, our multivariate analyses show cross-national similarities in terms of lower job learning opportunities for female part-timers. We found a significantly higher incidence of repetitiveness only among Swedish female part-timers and lower degrees of task discretion among British, Dutch, and Swedish women working part-time hours. Female part-timers were either equally satisfied with their work as female full-timers or even more satisfied. This held true also after accounting for the lower intrinsic job quality of part-time work. While women working part-time hours were as affected by their job quality characteristics as were full-timers, we conclude that the shorter hours of work per se provide an important additional source of job satisfaction.

The wage differential between women and men persists in advanced economies despite the inflow of women into qualified occupations in recent years. Using five waves of the Swedish Level-of-Living Survey (LNU), this paper explores the gender wage gap in Sweden during the 1974-2010 period overall and by skill level. The empirical analyses showed that the general gender wage gap has been nearly unchanged for the past 30 years. However, the gender difference in wage in less qualified occupations fell considerably, whereas the gender pay gap remained stable for men and women in qualified occupations. The larger significance of family responsibilities for wages in qualified occupations is one likely explanation for this result.

No abstract

This irivestigafioii addresses the reliability of self-reports of sick leave. Althoiigli sick leave is an objective riieasiire which is often relevant for deteniiiiiirig oiitconie and cost-beriejit, obtairi irig records front eniployeers or irisiirarice coinparlies may be a considerable task. Coiiseqiiently, we compared reports of sick leave diiriiig the last inoiith made by 66 patierits witli iniisciiloskeletal pain problerits on the Oiitcoriie Evahation Qiiestionrinire bvith records froiii their irisiirance ofice. Resiilts indicated good reliability with a correlation of r =.95, similar distributions, arid no indication of systematic over or iinder reporting. Indeed, some examples are provided where part of the discrepancy may depend on idiosyncrasies iii the irisiirance records or lack of clear dejiiiitioits rather than poor acciiracy on the patient's part. Our results suggest that self-reports of sick leave are reliable for recerzt time periods mid a drtratiori of oiie moiifli.