PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Tom Sterud AU - Eirik Degerud AU - Øivind Skare AU - Therese N Hanvold AU - Jan Olav Christensen TI - Adverse social behaviour at the workplace and subsequent physician certified sick leave: a three-wave prospective study of the general working population in Norway AID - 10.1136/oemed-2020-106973 DP - 2021 Jan 28 TA - Occupational and Environmental Medicine PG - oemed-2020-106973 4099 - http://oem.bmj.com/content/early/2021/01/28/oemed-2020-106973.short 4100 - http://oem.bmj.com/content/early/2021/01/28/oemed-2020-106973.full AB - Objectives We aimed to provide an integrated picture of the relationship between different facets of adverse social behaviour (ASB) at the workplace and sick leave.Methods Data from a randomly drawn prospective cohort of the general working population. Eligible respondents were interviewed in 2009, 2013 or 2016, and were registered with an employee relationship of at least 50 working days in the national register the year following the survey interviews (n=21 674 observations/13 470 respondents). We investigated the prospective associations of self-reported exposure to ASB, including threats/acts of violence, bullying and sexual harassment, with physician-certified sick leave of 1–16 days (ie, low level of sick leave (LLSL)) and >16 days (ie, high level of sick leave (HLSL)) by means of mixed effects logistic regression.Results The prevalence of sick leave was 18.4% (n=3986 observations) for LLSL and 16.1% (n=3492 observations) for HLSL. The different facets of ASB were independently associated with higher odds of sick leave, with stronger associations for HLSL than for LLSL. Adjusted for sex, age, education level, occupation, previous sickness absence level, OR (95% CI) for HLSL was 1.97 (1.61 to 2.35) for threats/acts of violence, 1.97 (1.53 to 2.54) for bullying and 1.41 (1.10 to 1.79) for sexual harassment. The population risks of LLSL and HLSL attributable to ASB were 5.27 (95% CI 1.85 to 8.81) and 8.27% (95% CI 4.01 to 12.48), respectively.Conclusions Threats/acts of violence, bullying and sexual harassment were all independent predictors of sick leave, with threats/acts of violence appearing as the single most important factor.