Twice a year, employees received a short questionnaire, capturing

mainly outcome measures. In May 1998, a total of 26,978 employees from 45 companies and organizations received a letter at home, inviting participation and the self-administered baseline questionnaire. A Ilomastat reminder was sent out after 2 weeks. After 6 weeks, Temsirolimus a brief nonresponse questionnaire was sent to a random subsample of 600 nonrespondents. Nonresponse analyses yielded no significant differences between respondents and nonrespondents regarding demographic characteristics. Nonrespondents were somewhat less likely to report difficulties in work execution, fatigue complaints and sick leave (Kant et al. 2003). Altogether, 12,161 employees completed and returned the baseline questionnaire (response rate of 45%). Sixty-six questionnaires were excluded from analysis due to technical reasons or because inclusion criteria were not met. Included were employees aged 18–65. Written consent was obtained from all participants. PFT�� order The study was of a strict observational nature and was

conducted in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. The baseline (T0) cohort consists of 8,840 (73%) men and 3,255 (27%) women. All employees who returned the baseline questionnaire (T0) received the two short questionnaires T1 in September 1998 (response rate 87.6%, n = 10,592) and T2 in January 1999 (response rate 84.9%,

n = 10,270) as well. Employees returning the baseline questionnaire and at least one of the short questionnaires (T1 and/or T2) received the extensive questionnaire T3 in May 1999 (response rate 79.8%, n = 9,655). Employees returning the T3 questionnaire also received the short questionnaires T4 in September 1999 (response rate 74.0%, n = 8,956) and T5 in January 2000 (response rate 71.9%, n = 8,692). Employees who returned the questionnaire at T3 and at least one of the consecutive short questionnaires (T4 and/or T5) also received the extensive questionnaire T6 in May 2000 (response selleck chemicals llc rate 66.7%, n = 8,070). Further information about the procedure and baseline characteristics has been reported elsewhere (Kant et al. 2003). For describing associations between characteristics of the study population and need for recovery from work, we used the baseline questionnaire (T0, May 1998). Excluded were those employees who were absent from work at the time of completing the questionnaire and those involved in shift work, resulting in a study population of n = 7,734, of which 5,586 were men, and 2,148 were women, for the cross-sectional analyses. For the prospective analyses over 2 years of follow-up, we additionally excluded prevalent cases of need for recovery at baseline, resulting in a study population of n = 5,990, of which 4,254 were men, and 1,736 were women.