Change in economic difficulties and physical and mental functioning: Evidence from British and Finnish employee cohorts

Persistent financial hardship, 11‐year weight gain, and health behaviors in the W hitehall II study

“…Equivalent levels of financial strain can be perceived and experienced as a normative status of daily living for some groups but as deprivation for others . Precedent exists, however, for the measures used here as findings of independent associations are consistent with studies of other outcomes in this cohort . Misclassification of exposures from reporting bias would be nondifferential as it was unlikely related to measured weight and hence would have biased results towards the null.…”

Association of sleep duration and sleep quality with the physical, social, and emotional functioning among Australian adults

“…The validity of the SF-36 as well as the item-internal consistency, item-discriminant validity, and scale reliabilities in these data have been found to be good and subscales included in this study were shown to have sound psychometric properties, namely good internal consistency, discriminant validity and high reliability (28). We dichotomized each subscale to focus on the poorest functioning quartile, as has been commonly done in previous literature (29)(30)(31).…”

The influence of chronic health problems on work ability and productivity at work: a longitudinal study among older employees

“…This has also been found in two recent studies. Namely, Lallukka and colleagues assessed the influence of economic difficulties on self-rated health and found that a reduction in economic difficulties still related to poorer physical health during the 4-7 years of follow-up (17). Furthermore, De Raeve and colleagues assessed the relation between one-year changes in work schedules, working hours, and working overtime with one-year changes in self-reported health outcomes such as fatigue and psychological distress, and found that the presumed positive changes in working conditions were occasionally also related to worsening health (28).…”

“…It is possible that persons with health problems have lower work ability and productivity at work than persons without health problems, but that the mere presence of such problems does not cause a decrease in work ability and productivity within one year. In a recent study, changes in self-perceived economic difficulties were associated with a decline in mental and physical functioning during a 4-7 year follow-up period (17). In the third model, we apply a similar approach and specifically relate changes in health (ie, incidence and recovery) during a particular year to direct changes in work ability and productivity at work during that same year.…”