Job stress, absenteeism and coronary heart disease European cooperative study (the JACE study). Design of a multicentre prospective study

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Abstract
Background: The motives, objectives and design of a multicentre prospective study on job stress, absenteeism and coronary heart disease in Europe (the JACE study) is presented in this paper. Some specific gaps in the reviewed literature are explicitly tapped into by the JACE study. Its objectives are i) to compare the distributions of the Karasek job stress scales for the same broad categories of occupations in different European countries (in males and females), ii) to study the predictive power of the job stress scales and the job strain model for one year of sickness absence (in males and females) and iii) to study the predictive power of the job stress scales and the job strain model for a three year incidence of coronary heart disease (In males only). Methods: In answering these questions, relations are studied controlling for gender, age, level of education, company size, physical work risks and shift work, as well as traditional risk factors for CHD (i.e serum cholesterol, serum HDL cholesterol, smoking habits and blood pressure). The JACE study is a Biomed 1 concerted action. The JACE group consists of eight participating centres from six countries, i.e. from Belgium and Sweden (two centres), France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and The Netherlands (each one centre). The coordination of the group is in Brussels. The participating centres brought in over 15, 000 European workers to test the hypotheses.

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