Hermann Burr

• Ph.D.
• Senior Researcher at Bundesanstalt für Arbeitsschutz und Arbeitsmedizin, Berlin, Germany

The Job Content Questionnaire JCQ 2.0 (JCQ 2.0) thoroughly revises the well-known JCQ 1, based on an expanded Demand/Control theory-consistent platform with new scales, the Associationalist Demand Control (ADC) theory. This study tests the JCQ 2.0 in an urban population in Germany (N = 2326) for concurrent validity of each specific task and organiz...

We hypothesised that the association between quality of leadership and mental distress would be stronger in Germany than in Denmark. The two countries differ in terms of working life cultures and labour markets, factors possibly mitigating the association of quality of leadership with mental distress. Data were based on the German Study on Mental H...

Zusammenfassung In der Studie wird der Zusammenhang zwischen der Burnoutdimension emotionale Erschöpfung mit nachfolgenden Ereignissen der Nichterwerbsteilhabe (Langzeit-Arbeitsunfähigkeit, Arbeitslosigkeit, Frühberentung) und deren Dauer untersucht. Die Datenbasis bildet die Studie zur Mentalen Gesundheit bei der Arbeit (S-MGA); eine Verlaufsstudi...

Purpose This study analyzed longitudinal data to examine whether occupational sitting time is associated with increases in body mass index (BMI) and five-year cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. Methods We included 2,000 employed men and women (aged 31–60) from the German Study on Mental Health at Work (S-MGA) for a BMI analysis and 1,635 participa...

Objectives To examine the association between work ability and work nonparticipation, including long-term sickness absence (LTSA), unemployment (UE), and disability pension/early retirement (ER). Methods We conducted a questionnaire-based 5-year follow-up study on a representative sample of the German working population (n = 2426). We employed a t...

Background Unsafe and unhealthy working conditions lead to injuries and financial losses across the globe, resulting in a need for research into effective work environment interventions. Objectives The objective of this evidence and gap map (EGM) is to provide an overview of existing systematic reviews and primary studies examining the effects of...

Zusammenfassung Hintergrund Regelmäßige lange Arbeitszeiten und Arbeitswege könnten negative Folgen für die psychische Gesundheit haben. Die Studienergebnisse hierzu sind jedoch nicht eindeutig und variieren nach Ländern. Die vorliegende Analyse prüft für Deutschland Zusammenhänge zwischen langen Pendel- bzw. Arbeitszeiten und depressiver Symptomat...

Background We examined the association of depressive symptoms with subsequent events – and duration thereof – of work nonparticipation (long-term sickness absence, unemployment and early retirement). Methods We employed a 5-year cohort from the Study on Mental Health at Work (S-MGA), based on a random sample of employees subject to social contribu...

Precarious work and depressive symptoms: gender-related associations Introduction: Longitudinal studies indicate that men are at greater risk than women of developing symptoms of depression as a result of precarious work. A South Korean study suggests that household position may explain this difference. The question arises as to whether these risk...

Objective To test the hypothesis that psychosocial working conditions are more strongly associated with subsequent work-related emotional exhaustion (core component of burnout) than with depressive symptoms at follow-up. Methods A 5-year cohort study (2011/2012–2017), based on a random sample of persons in employment subject to payment of social c...

Objective: Previous literature has established associations between psychosocial working conditions and sickness absence (SA), but only few studies have examined associations among younger employees. This study aimed to investigate associations between psychosocial working conditions and SA among employees, aged 15-30 years, who entered the labor...

Background: We examined the impact of depressive symptoms on events – and duration thereof – of work nonparticipation (long-term sickness absence, unemployment, early retirement). Methods: We used a 5-year cohort of the Study on Mental Health at Work (S-MGA) based on a random sample of employees subject to social contributions aged 31–60 years in 2...

Background: Regular long working and commuting hours are thought to have negative consequences for mental health. However, the study results are not clear and vary by country. The present analysis examines associations between working or commuting hours and depressive symptoms for Germany. Method: The S-MGA study (German Study on Mental Health at W...

Purpose It has been hypothesized that employment in a fixed-term instead of permanent contract position is associated with an increased risk of development of mental health problems. The present study aimed at estimating rate ratios between fixed-term and permanent employees in the Danish labor force, for use of psychotropic drugs and psychiatric h...

Background The presentation is dedicated to employees who care for others in addition to their work. The starting point is the representative cohort study on mental health at work (S-MGA), which covered both care at home and care outside the home in the second wave of the survey. In this regard, cross sectional associations with exhaustion and work...

Background Both perceived job insecurity and unemployment has been associated with an increased risk of developing mental ill health. It has, moreover, been proposed that an insecure employment may be as detrimental as unemployment itself. Objective To estimate incidence rate ratios (RRs) of (i) redeemed prescriptions for psychotropic drugs and (i...

Background Heavy alcohol consumption increases the risk of several chronic diseases. In this multicohort study, we estimated the number of life-years without major chronic diseases according to different characteristics of alcohol use. Methods In primary analysis, we pooled individual-level data from up to 129,942 adults across 12 cohort studies w...

Objectives: The aim was to investigate workplace bullying as a risk factor for five-year occurrence of long-term sickness absence (LTSA) in a representative cohort of employees in Germany. Methods: In the German Study on Mental Health at Work (S-MGA) (n = 2476), episodes of long-term sickness absence (LTSA) between baseline and follow-up were as...

Objectives: The aim of this study was to analyze whether individuals reporting exposure to workplace bullying had a higher risk of suicidal behavior, including both suicide attempt and death by suicide, than those not reporting such exposure. Methods: Using a prospective cohort study design, we linked data from nine Danish questionnaire-based su...

This is the protocol for a Campbell systematic review. The objectives are as follows: provide an overview of the existing evidence base by identifying available systematic reviews and primary effectiveness studies, identify clusters of evidence suitable for a systematic review and identify gaps in evidence where primary research is needed.

Objective: Previous studies on effects of emotional demands on depression have relied on self-reported exposure data and lacked control for potential confounding by pre-employment risk factors for depression. This study used a register-based design to examine the risk of hospital-treated depressive disorder in relation to occupational levels of em...

Objectives: The aim was to investigate the longitudinal relationship between precarious work and depressive symptoms in a representative cohort of employees in Germany. Methods: In the German Study on Mental Health at Work (S-MGA) (n = 2009), depressive symptoms were assessed by the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9). Precarious work was measu...

Objective Depressive symptoms are a leading cause of disability retirement and sick leave. The aim of this study was to assess the risk of depressive symptoms in German employees and its associations with factors from both the occupational and the non-occupational domain and gender. Methods In the second wave of the German Study of Mental Health a...

Despite the fact that workaholism and workplace aggressive behavior share many correlates, such as neuroticism, hostility, and negative affectivity, little is known about their relationship, with most evidence on both phenomena coming from cross-sectional studies. In the present study, we contributed to a better understanding of the antecedents of...

Objective To examine 5-year prospective associations between working conditions and work ability among employees in Germany. Methods A cohort study (2011/2012–2017), based on a random sample of employees in employments subject to payment of social contributions aged 31–60 years (Study on Mental Health at Work; S-MGA; N = 2,078), included data on p...

Objectives: The aim of the present study was to examine the long-term association of job demands and job resources with self-reported exposure to workplace bullying in a representative sample of employees in Germany. Methods: We analysed a nation-wide representative cohort of employees working in the same workplace with a 5-year follow-up (S-MGA...

Background Studies on the association between long working hours and health have captured only a narrow range of outcomes (mainly cardiometabolic diseases and depression) and no outcome-wide studies on this topic are available. To achieve wider scope of potential harm, we examined long working hours as a risk factor for a wide range of disease and...

Testing assumptions of the widely used demand–control (DC) model in occupational psychosocial epidemiology, we investigated (a) interaction, i.e., whether the combined effect of low job control and high psychological demands on depressive symptoms was stronger than the sum of their single effects (i.e., superadditivity) and (b) whether subscales of...

In work and health research, there is a lack of studies on prevalence of psychosocial (eg, quantitative demands, social relations) and physical (eg, physical activity, heavy lifting) working conditions among national employee populations - and their trends. [In the following, I shall not discuss the issue of trends of other exposures, such as chemi...

Background: We examined the association between probability of work-related violence and first diagnosis of depressive disorder whilst accounting for the potential selection of individuals vulnerable to depression into occupations with high probability of work-related violence. Methods: Based on a pre-published study protocol, we analysed nationwid...

Objectives: We would assess the possible impact of a range of physical and psychosocial working conditions on early exit from paid employment (i.e., before retirement age) in a representative employee population in Germany. Methods: We analysed a cohort from the German Study on Mental Health at Work (S-MGA) with a baseline of 2351 employees in 2...

This is a non-peer-review preprint of a manuscript that has since then been published in a peer-reviewed journal. The reference for the final version of this paper is: Conway et al. Workplace bullying and risk of suicide and suicide attempts: A register-based prospective cohort study of 98 330 participants in Denmark. Scandinavian Journal of Wor...

ABSTRACT Aim: To present a protocol for the analysis of the prospective association between workplace bullying and suicidal behaviour. Method: The analyses will be carried out on a sample of 98,330 participants (64% women, n=62,582) taken from a pooled dataset of nine Danish questionnaire-based surveys (2004-2014) including self-reported measures...

Background: In 2018, 14% of employees in EU had fixed term contracts. Fixed term contract positions are often less secure than permanent contract positions. Perceived job insecurity has been associated with increased rates of mental ill health. The association between fixed term contract positions and mental ill health is, however, uncertain. A re...

BACKGROUND In 2018, 14% of employees in the European Union had fixed-term contracts. Fixed-term contract positions are often less secure than permanent contract positions. Perceived job insecurity has been associated with increased rates of mental ill health. However, the association between fixed-term contract positions and mental ill health is un...

Background: Previous studies have found low job control to be associated with a higher risk of disability pension (DP). Most studies have measured job control only at one time-point, and there is a lack of knowledge regarding the role of exposure duration. This study examines the prospective association between job control and DP measuring exposur...

This study presents the Swedish standard version of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire, COPSOQ III, and investigates its reliability and validity at individual and workplace levels with the aim of establishing benchmarks for the psychosocial work environment. Cross-sectional data from (1) a random sample of employees in Sweden aged 25–65 yea...

Objectives The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of self-reported workplace bullying on depressive symptoms in a prospective study among a representative sample of employees from Germany. We focused specifically on the role of the perpetrator (co-workers and superiors), which was never done before in a longitudinal design. Methods We...

Background Job strain is implicated in many atherosclerotic diseases, but its role in peripheral artery disease ( PAD ) is unclear. We investigated the association of job strain with hospital records of PAD , using individual‐level data from 11 prospective cohort studies from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. Methods and Results Jo...

Importance It is well established that selected lifestyle factors are individually associated with lower risk of chronic diseases, but how combinations of these factors are associated with disease-free life-years is unknown. Objective To estimate the association between healthy lifestyle and the number of disease-free life-years. Design, Setting,...

Purpose Job control, the combination of skill discretion and decision authority, is considered a central component of the psychosocial working environment. This longitudinal study examines the relation between job control and risk of incident depressive disorder using a life-course approach. Methods We analyze data from The Danish Work Life Course...

Introduction: A new third version of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ III) has been developed in response to trends in working life, theoretical concepts, and international experience. A key component of the COPSOQ III is a defined set of mandatory core items to be included in national short, middle, and long versions of the quest...

Purpose To investigate whether self-reported exposure to workplace bullying predicts the risk of disability pensioning among employees in two occupational groups—(1) employees working with clients or customers and (2) office workers and manual workers—and whether leadership support and occupational group moderates that association. Methods Survey...

Objectives The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of workplace bullying in Germany while also taking the perpetrator and severity level (measured by frequency) into account and considering the role of gender, age and socio-economic status. Methods We used data from a large representative sample (N = 4143) of employees in Germany subje...

In psychosocial occupational epidemiology, most past research has focused on the demand-control (DC) model, and in recent decades also on the effort-reward imbalance (ERI) model, in order to detect risk factors for health. The focus on these models raise: a) priority, b) conceptual and c) methodological issues that will be discussed in the article....

Introduction Studies have indicated that long working hours is associated with circulatory diseases. The aim of the present studies was to test if long working hours were prospectively associated with ischaemic heart disease (IHD), usage of antihypertensive drugs (AD) and stroke, in a large randomly selected sample from the general workforce of Den...

Objective: To present first representative data on burnout measured as exhaustion in German employees. Methods: Data was taken from the Study on Mental Health at Work (n = 4,058). Computer-assisted personal interviews were conducted in 2011-2012. Multiple linear regression models were estimated to investigate the association between work-related...

Objectives This systematic review and meta-analysis combined published study-level data and unpublished individual-participant data with the aim of quantifying the relation between long working hours and the onset of depressive symptoms. Methods We searched PubMed and Embase for published prospective cohort studies and included available cohorts wi...

Aims: A systematic review and meta-analysis have found that long working hours were prospectively associated with an increased risk of overall stroke. The primary aim of the present study was to test if this finding could be reproduced in a sample that has been randomly selected from the general workforce of Denmark. A secondary aim was to estimat...

Aims: Studies suggest that people who work long hours are at increased risk of stroke, but the association of long working hours with atrial fibrillation, the most common cardiac arrhythmia and a risk factor for stroke, is unknown. We examined the risk of atrial fibrillation in individuals working long hours (≥55 per week) and those working standa...

Introduction I ll health, socio-economic status and working conditions are important determinants for labour market participation. But this perspective neglects the subjective view of individuals and the role of cognitive processes. The aim of the present study is to investigate the contribution of these considerations for the prediction of subsequ...

Background: Epidemiologic evidence for work stress as a risk factor for coronary heart disease is mostly based on a single measure of stressful work known as job strain, a combination of high demands and low job control. We examined whether a complementary stress measure that assesses an imbalance between efforts spent at work and rewards received...

Background The prevalence of workers with demanding physical working conditions in the European work force remains high, and occupational physical exposures are considered important risk factors for musculoskeletal disorders (MSD), a major burden for both workers and society. Exposures to physical workloads are therefore part of the European nation...

Objectives Few epidemiological studies have examined whether associations of psychosocial working conditions with risk of poor health differ by age. Based on results from mostly cross-sectional studies, we test whether (i) psychosocial relational factors (social support) are more strongly associated with declining health of older than younger emplo...

Objectives: The aims of this article are to (1) determine whether and to what extent general perceived health and quality of supervision predict voluntary early retirement pension (VERP) and (2) assess whether quality of supervision modifies the association between general perceived health and VERP. Methods: Employees aged 49-64 years who partic...

Objective Due to the growing proportion of older employees in the work force in several countries, the importance of age in the association between work and health is becoming increasingly relevant. Few studies have investigated whether age modifies the association of physical work demands with health. We hypothesized that the association of demand...

Background Adverse psychosocial working environments characterized by job strain (the combination of high demands and low control at work) are associated with an increased risk of depressive symptoms among employees, but evidence on clinically diagnosed depression is scarce. We examined job strain as a risk factor for clinical depression. Method W...

Objectives To investigate the differences between a questionnaire-based and accelerometer-based sitting time, and develop a model for improving the accuracy of questionnaire-based sitting time for predicting accelerometer-based sitting time. Methods 183 workers in a cross-sectional study reported sitting time per day using a single question during...

Background: Job insecurity has been associated with certain health outcomes. We examined the role of job insecurity as a risk factor for incident diabetes. Methods: We used individual participant data from 8 cohort studies identified in 2 open-access data archives and 11 cohort studies participating in the Individual-Participant-Data Meta-analys...

Background The current understanding of the relationship between unwanted sexual attention at work and long-term sickness absence (LTSA) is limited for three reasons: 1) the under-researched role of unwanted sexual attention perpetrated by individuals outside the work organization; 2) a widespread use of self-reported measures of sickness absence,...

Objectives To investigate if participation in workplace health promotion (WHP) depends on the work environment. Methods Questionnaire data on participation in WHP activities (smoking cessation, healthy diet, exercise facilities, weekly exercise classes, contact with health professionals, health screenings) and the work environment (social support,...

Working longer than the maximum recommended hours is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, but the relationship of excess working hours with incident cancer is unclear. METHODS: This multi-cohort study examined the association between working hours and cancer risk in 116 462 men and women who were free of cancer at baseline....

Psychosocial occupational epidemiology has mainly focused on the demand-control and, to a much lesser extent, the effort-reward-imbalance (ERI) models. These models and the strong focus on them raise some conceptual and methodological issues we will address in the following letter. The conceptual issues include the empirical confirmation of the ass...

Background: Working longer than the maximum recommended hours is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, but the relationship of excess working hours with incident cancer is unclear. Methods: This multi-cohort study examined the association between working hours and cancer risk in 116 462 men and women who were free of cance...

Background: Previous studies have shown that high effort-reward imbalance (ERI) at work is a risk factor for the onset of self-reported depressive symptoms. In this study, we examined whether ERI predicts risk of treatment with antidepressant medication in a representative sample of the Danish workforce. Methods: We linked survey data on ERI and...

This study protocol describes planned analyses to examine the association between job strain and depressive symptoms, with a particular focus on interactions with potential vulnerability factors outside the work environment.

This study protocol describes planned analyses to examine the association between job strain and depressive symptoms, with a particular focus on interactions with potential vulnerability factors outside the work environment.

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate whether sedentary work is a distinct risk factor for ischemic heart disease (IHD) when the effect of occupational sitting is disentangled from that of occupational physical activity. Methods: Data on occupational sitting time and several covariates were derived from the Danish Work Environment Cohort S...

Background: Long working hours might increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, but prospective evidence is scarce, imprecise, and mostly limited to coronary heart disease. We aimed to assess long working hours as a risk factor for incident coronary heart disease and stroke. / Methods: We identified published studies through a systematic review o...

Medically Unexplained Symptoms (MUS) are frequently encountered in general practice. However, little is known whether MUS affects labor market participation. We investigated the prospective association between MUS at baseline and risk of long-term sickness absence (LTSA), unemployment, and disability pensioning in a 5-year-follow-up study. In the D...

Long working hours might increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, but prospective evidence is scarce, imprecise, and mostly limited to coronary heart disease. We aimed to assess long working hours as a risk factor for incident coronary heart disease and stroke. We identified published studies through a systematic review of PubMed and Embase fro...

Hintergrund Fragen zum Zusammenhang von Arbeitsfaktoren einerseits und psychischer und physischer Gesundheit der Beschäftigten andererseits sind in Deutschland aktuell und werden weiter aktuell bleiben. Fragestellung Inzwischen liegt hierzulande eine Reihe von Datensätzen vor, die Daten sowohl zu Arbeit als auch Gesundheit enthalten. Oft allerdings...

To determine the effect of job insecurity based on repeated measurements on ischemic heart disease (IHD) and on antihypertensive medication. The study population consists of 12,559 employees aged 18-59 years of the Danish Work Environment Cohort Study. With an open cohort design, data from up to four representative waves were linked to four registe...