TY - JOUR T1 - Job-exposure matrices addressing lifestyle to be applied in register-based occupational health studies JF - Occupational and Environmental Medicine JO - Occup Environ Med SP - 890 LP - 897 DO - 10.1136/oemed-2018-104991 VL - 75 IS - 12 AU - Sesilje Bondo Petersen AU - Esben Meulengracht Flachs AU - Eva Irene Bossano Prescott AU - Anne Tjønneland AU - Merete Osler AU - Ingelise Andersen AU - Knud Juel AU - Esben Budz-Jørgensen AU - Henrik A Kolstad AU - Vivi Schlünssen AU - Jens Peter Bonde Y1 - 2018/12/01 UR - http://oem.bmj.com/content/75/12/890.abstract N2 - Objectives Information about lifestyle factors in register-based occupational health studies is often not available. The objective of this study was therefore to develop gender, age and calendar-time specific job-exposure matrices (JEMs) addressing five selected lifestyle characteristics across job groups as a tool for lifestyle adjustment in register-based studies.Methods We combined and harmonised questionnaire and interview data on lifestyle from several Danish surveys in the time period 1981–2013 for 264 054 employees registered with a DISCO-88 code (the Danish version of International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO)-88) in a nationwide register-based Danish Occupational Cohort. We modelled the probability of specified lifestyles in mixed models for each level of the four-digit DISCO code with age and sex as fixed effects and assessed variation in terms of intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) and exposure-level percentile ratios across jobs for six different time periods from 1981 through 2013.Results The ICCs were overall low (0.26%–7.05%) as the within-job group variation was large relative to the between job group variation, but across jobs the calendar period-specific ratios between highest and lowest predicted levels were ranging from 1.2 to 6.9, and for the 95%/1% and the 75%/5% percentile ratios ranges were 1.1–2.8 and 1.1–1.6, respectively, thus indicating substantial contrast for some lifestyle exposures and some occupations.Conclusions The lifestyle JEMs may prove a useful tool for control of lifestyle-related confounding in register-based occupational health studies where lacking information on individual lifestyle factors may compromise internal validity. ER -