Returning to Work After Stress-Related Sick Leave: An Effectiveness Trial of Work-Focused Treatments in Primary Care

Self-reported change in work ability. WAI consists of 7 domains, 11 questions in total. WAS is the first question of WAI.

Register data MiDAS from the Swedish Social Insurance Agency reflecting sickness absence - start- and stop date, both episodes and monthly panels for sickness benefit and activity compensation, diagnose, employment/occupation and paid out compensation.

Participants will respond to the questions "Have you worked during the past week?" and "Are you currently on sick leave?". If yes, participants reports the proportion (25, 50, 75 or 100%) related to normal working hours.

Six items. Labels have been added to the original response scale. The participant can rate whether they experience the symptom "never", "almost never", "rarely", "sometimes" "fairy often", "almost always", "always".

7 items.

This 20-item scale measures symptoms of fatigue. The participant is asked to rate statements and if he/she felt it during the last two weeks. Examples of questions are: "I feel tired", "I think I do a lot in a day", etc. The statements are rated on a 7-point scale with added labels as follows: "never true", "very rarely true", "rarely true", "sometimes true", "quite often true", "very often true", and "always true".

Measures depressive symptoms. The occurrence of symptoms during the past two weeks is originally rated on a four-point scale labeled "not at all" to "nearly every day". To capture a more accurate estimation, an additional option category was added following a newly published study (see ref below). In addition, the highest option was adjusted from "nearly every day" to "every day" due to a high similarity between two options. The final response scale had the following five categories: "Not at all", "once or twice", "several days", "more than half the days", and "every day". The patient also rated how difficult those symptoms have made it for the participant to handle activities in everyday life.

Ref: Makowski, D., Te, A., Neves, A., & Chen, S. A. (2024). Measuring Depression and Anxiety with 4 items? Adaptation of the PHQ-4 to increase its Sensitivity to Subclinical Variability. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/436np

7 items. The occurrence of symptoms during the past two weeks is originally rated on a four-point scale labeled "not at all" to "nearly every day". To capture a more accurate estimation, an additional option category was added following a newly published study (see ref below). In addition, the highest option was adjusted from "nearly every day" to "every day" due to a high similarity between two options. The final response scale had the following five categories: "Not at all", "once or twice", "several days", "more than half the days", and "every day".

Ref: Makowski, D., Te, A., Neves, A., & Chen, S. A. (2024). Measuring Depression and Anxiety with 4 items? Adaptation of the PHQ-4 to increase its Sensitivity to Subclinical Variability. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/436np

Measures quality of life in eight domains by 12 items.

Nine items from the original 11-item questionnaire were chosen, and items 3 and 11 were rewritten in order to achieve consistency in the wording. Item 2 was removed due to the overlap with item 4. Item 6 was removed since the question did not concern self-efficacy. Answers are rated on a 6-point labeled scale from "totally disagree" to "totally agree".

Items 1, 2, 7, 9, 13 from the original questionnaire were chosen. In addition, labels were added to the six-point scale: "strongly disagree", "mostly disagree", "somewhat disagree", "somewhat agree", "mostly agree", "strongly agree".

4 items.

A subscale concering aviodance from the psychological inflexibility in pain scale was modified to measure aviodance related to stress. The word "pain" from the original scale was replaced by "stress". 8 items.

12 items.

The questions are inspired from the questionnaire "Credibility/Expectancy Questionnaire" but are designed for this study. 3 items: (I) how relevant the treatment seems at the moment, from "not at all" to "completely", (II) prediction of how the treatment will affect symptoms and (III) work ability, from "it will become much worse" to "it will be much better".

6 items.

8 items.

Five questions are used from the original instrument, the Negative Effects Questionnaire. Included items: (I) the perception of being less competent, (II) worsening of the problem, (III) thoughts that the issue would not get better, (IV) feeling of shame due to having the treatment, (V) and development of dependency towards the therapist. If any of the statesmen were experienced, the participant rates how much it affects him/her on a scale from "not at all" to "extremely" and if it was caused by the treatment or other circumstances.