PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Ida E H Madsen
AU  - Nidhi Gupta
AU  - Esben Budtz-Jørgensen
AU  - Jens Peter Bonde
AU  - Elisabeth Framke
AU  - Esben Meulengracht Flachs
AU  - Sesilje Bondo Petersen
AU  - Annemette Coop Svane-Petersen
AU  - Andreas Holtermann
AU  - Reiner Rugulies
TI  - Physical work demands and psychosocial working conditions as predictors of musculoskeletal pain: a cohort study comparing self-reported and job exposure matrix measurements
AID  - 10.1136/oemed-2018-105151
DP  - 2018 Oct 01
TA  - Occupational and Environmental Medicine
PG  - 752--758
VI  - 75
IP  - 10
4099  - http://oem.bmj.com/content/75/10/752.short
4100  - http://oem.bmj.com/content/75/10/752.full
SO  - Occup Environ Med2018 Oct 01; 75
AB  - Objectives Determining exposure to occupational factors by workers’ job titles is extensively used in epidemiological research. However, the correspondence of findings regarding associations to health between job exposure matrices (JEMs) and individual-level exposure data is largely unknown. We set out to examine the prospective associations of physical work demands and psychosocial working conditions with musculoskeletal pain, comparing JEMs with individual-level self-reported exposures.Methods We analysed data of 8132 participants from the Work Environment and Health in Denmark cohort study. Using random intercept multilevel modelling, we constructed age-specific and sex-specific JEMs estimating predicted exposures in job groups. We analysed associations between working conditions (individual and JEM level) at baseline and musculoskeletal pain at follow-up using multilevel modelling stratified by sex, adjusting for age, education and baseline pain.Results Any consistent associations present in the individual-level analysis were also found in the JEM-level analysis. Higher pain levels at follow-up was seen for employees with higher baseline physical work demands, women exposed to violence and men with lower decision authority, whether measured at the individual or JEM level. Higher JEM-level quantitative demands were associated with less pain, but no association was seen at the individual level.Conclusions We found predominately comparable prospective associations between working conditions and pain, whether using JEMs or individual level exposures, with the exception of quantitative demands. The results suggest that, with few notable exceptions, findings obtained using JEMs may be comparable with those obtained when using self-reported exposures.