Background In a 3-year follow-up study of the general working population of Norway, we have previously reported evidence of an association between self-reported occupational skin exposure and skin problems. However, such association was weaker for responders reporting exposure only at baseline (2006), compared to those reporting exposure at follow-up (2009). Therefore, we aimed to assess whether the occurrence of skin problems at baseline influenced response frequency at follow-up leading to a potential healthy worker survivor effect.

Methods The cohort comprised respondents drawn randomly from the general population of Norway, who were registered employed in 2006 and 2009 (n = 6,745), and participated in the nationwide Survey of Living Conditions-Work environment (Statistics Norway). Associations between baseline indicators (sex, age, education, occupation, and occurrence of skin problems) with response frequency at follow-up were assessed by Chi-square tests and unconditional logistic regression. The level for significance was set to p < .05 (95% CI)

Results The response frequency for women was higher at follow-up. For both age and education, response frequency at follow-up increased incrementally with older ages and higher levels of education. For occupation, the lowest response frequency was among elementary occupations (61.5%), plant-machine operators and assemblers (65.3%), and craft-related trade workers (71.0%). We found no evidence of an association between the occurrence of skin problems at baseline and response frequency at follow-up.

Conclusion Overall, age, sex, education, and occupation seems to be the most important predictors of response frequency at follow-up. The occurrence of skin problems among participants at baseline seems to have little impact on the response frequency at follow-up, which provide little support to a healthy worker survivor effect. Future studies should assess for a potential healthy worker hire effect (healthy worker effect before recruitment).