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In numerous research disciplines, including epidemiology, it is common to compare different occupational categories, such as office workers and non-office workers. When only self-reported occupation titles are available, it is necessary to categorize individuals based on their self-reported titles. Thus, the possibility to identify office workers via self-reported occupation titles can enhance research on the health and well-being of office workers in large population-based epidemiological studies, even without specific questions about office work. This paper introduces data and R code that can be used to assign a proxy variable for office worker based on responses to an open-ended question (OEQ) about occupation in Swedish questionnaires. The proxy variable is based on the Swedish Standard Classification of Occupations 2012 (SSYK 2012), which includes 8946 occupation titles. Using a translation key, the titles have been categorized into three groups: managers, white-collar workers, and blue-collar workers. White-collar workers (including managers) are considered office workers, while blue-collar workers are classified as non-office workers. The proxy variable has been refined using pilot data from the Swedish population-based epidemiological resource LifeGene. The R code, together with the proxy variable, can be used in any dataset with a Swedish OEQ about occupation, facilitating the categorization of respondents as either white-collar or blue-collar workers and serving as a proxy variable for office worker. The R code can be used for OEQs regardless of language, provided there is a dataset with a standard classification of occupation in the desired language. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

Background Perceived stress in the workplace is a growing concern, with modern office environments often contributing through noise, crowding, and lack of privacy. To support office workers' well-being and recovery during the workday, new ways of working-such as spending time outdoors-are being explored.Objective This explorative pilot study aims to investigate whether engaging in at least 30 min of outdoor office work each day for five consecutive working days could reduce self-rated stress levels among office workers.Methods A within-subjects design was employed. During the first week, eight participants followed their regular office routine. In the second week, the same participants were instructed to spend a minimum of 30 min each day performing office work outdoors.Results In the second week, participants worked outdoors for an average of 322 min per week (approximate to 64 min/day), primarily in urban nature settings. Self-rated stress levels were 15% lower than in the first week, a statistically significant reduction by paired-sample t-test, though not by the Wilcoxon test.Conclusions Daily outdoor work is feasible among office workers and may reduce self-rated stress levels, warranting larger studies with more diverse participants and environments.

Employee surveys aim to assess employees' attitudes and work environments and offer a strategic approach to workplace improvement. However, in these surveys, areas related to health and lifestyle are often overlooked, despite their relevance to the wellbeing and performance of the employees. The aim of this scoping review was to examine the role of employee surveys in promoting physical health and healthy lifestyles among employees at the workplace.MethodsTo be eligible for inclusion, published articles needed to investigate employees' physical health or lifestyles and utilize employee survey data, be published in English within the last 10 years (2014-2024) and be available in full text in the databases ProQuest one business, Emerald Insight, PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus.Results1,550 studies were screened, and eight studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Of these, two studies assessed data at two time points to study change over time, and only one study aimed to influence behavior change of employees. This demonstrates a lack of evidence-based methods for linking employee surveys data to health promoting initiatives in a workplace context.ConclusionsThis scoping review highlights an urgent knowledge gap in the literature. Future research should explore the process of using employee surveys for identifying health related problems, designing and implementing solutions, follow-up improvements, and thereby creating a workplace health promoting loop process.RegistrationA study protocol has been preregistered on Open Science Framework with registration number xza4m.

In Sweden, approximately a quarter of upper secondary school students leave school early or do not complete their studies with full grades. Structured leisure time activities have been associated with improved health, enhanced school performance, and future college attendance. Therefore, the aim of this study was to gain an understanding of how adolescents perceive the prerequisites for and the importance of meaningful leisure time. Qualitative interviews and focus groups with adolescents aged 16–19 were conducted and analyzed using content analysis. The results highlighted the importance of autonomy in leisure time, equal opportunities, and social relationships. Adolescents expressed that an optimal balance between leisure time and school can result in a circle of positivity, leading to better school performance, skills development, and overall well-being.

Background: To enhance the usability of existing large population-based studies in epidemiologicresearch on office workers, we developed a procedure for a proxy variable on office worker in datawith open-ended responses on occupation.

Methods: Self-reported open answers on occupation (n=3738) from the LifeGene pilot study werelinked to a modified version of the Swedish Standard Classification of Occupation 2012 (SSYK12). TheSSYK12 includes 8946 job titles with 4-digit codes which were categorized to managers, white-collarand blue-collar workers. Managers and white-collar workers were used as a proxy for office workers.We then used fuzzy string matching in R to calculate the Jaro-Winkler distance between the LifeGenepilot data answers on occupation and the modified SSYK12 job titles. Zero distance indicated aperfect match, whereas distances above zero were checked manually to assess various job titles asoffice worker or non-office worker. Thereafter, the resulting procedure was applied to the wholeLifeGene study with data on occupation (n=23 525).

Results: We got perfect match against the modified SSYK12 job titles for 16 275 responses (69%) inthe large LifeGene data. Another 1721 responses (7%) matched occupations that we had manuallydefined as office worker or non-office worker in the pilot data set, and the remaining 5529 (24%)were unmatched. Among the matched occupations, 15 159 (84%) were office-workers, 2493 (14%)non-office workers, and 344 (2%) nondistinctive.

Conclusion: The procedure for a proxy variable on office worker allowed us to classify three quartersof the open-ended responses on occupation.

Background: Society is facing multiple challenges, including lifestyle- and age-related diseases of major public health relevance, and this is of particular importance when the general population, as well as the workforce, is getting older. In addition, we are facing global climate change due to extensive emissions of greenhouse gases and negative environmental effects. A lifestyle that promotes healthy life choices as well as climate and environmentally friendly decisions is considered a sustainable lifestyle. Objective: This study aims to evaluate if providing information about a sustainable lifestyle encourages individuals to adopt more nutritious dietary habits and increase physical activity, as compared to receiving information solely centered around health-related recommendations for dietary intake and physical activity by the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations and the World Health Organization. Novel features of this study include the use of the workplace as an arena for health promotion, particularly among office workers—a group known to be often sedentary at work and making up 60% of all employees in Sweden. Methods: The Sustainable Office Intervention (SOFIA) study is a 2-arm, participant-blinded, cluster randomized controlled trial that includes a multilevel sustainable lifestyle arm (intervention arm, n=19) and a healthy lifestyle arm (control arm, n=14). The eligibility criteria were being aged 18-65 years and doing office work ≥20 hours per week. Both intervention arms are embedded in the theoretically based behavioral change wheel method. The intervention study runs for approximately 8 weeks and contains 6 workshops. The study focuses on individual behavior change as well as environmental and policy features at an organizational level to facilitate or hinder a sustainable lifestyle at work. Through implementing a citizen science methodology within the trial, the participants (citizen scientists) collect data using the Stanford Our Voice Discovery Tool app and are involved in analyzing the data, formulating a list of potential actions to bring about feasible changes in the workplace. Results: Participant recruitment and data collection began in August 2022. As of June 2024, a total of 37 participants have been recruited. The results of the pilot phase are expected to be published in 2024 or 2025. Conclusions: Given the ongoing climate change, negative environmental effects, and the global epidemic of metabolic diseases, a sustainable lifestyle among office workers holds important potential to help in counteracting this trend. Thus, there is an urgent unmet need to test the impact of a sustainable lifestyle on food intake, physical activity, and environmental and climate impacts in a worksite-based randomized controlled trial. This study protocol responds to a societal need by addressing multilevel aspects, including individual behavior changes as well as environmental and organizational changes of importance for the successful implementation of sustainable lifestyle habits in an office setting. 

The socio ecological model states that individual behaviors at work are shaped by the interactions between individual employees and their work environments. This study used citizen science to gain insights into which elements of the built, social, and organizational environment in an office and surrounding neighborhoods in two Swedish cities were perceived as barriers to or facilitators of healthy and sustainable behaviors at work. Participants in the eight-week Sustainable Office Intervention pilot study (SOFIA) (n = 33) were cluster-randomized into an experimental arm (sustainable lifestyle) or a control intervention arm (healthy lifestyle). They used the Our Voice Healthy Neighborhood Discovery Tool mobile app to document contextual elements at their workplaces. In total, 114 photos and text-based narratives were recorded, and four themes emerged: built environment, building design, office ergonomics, and food and beverages. Eighteen percent of the photos were linked to pro-environmental behaviors, all exclusively captured by the experimental arm. Twelve barriers and solutions for improving the workplace environment were identified during discussions with participants in both arms. The findings provide insights for designing or renovating office spaces and urban planning to promote healthier and more sustainable lifestyles for office workers.

Background: Postsecondary students need to be able to handle self-regulated learning and manage schedules set by instructors. This is particularly the case with online courses, as they often come with a limited number of social reminders and less information directly from the teacher compared to courses with physical presence. This may increase procrastination and reduce timeliness of the students. Reminders may be a tool to improve the timeliness of students’ study behavior, but previous research shows that the effect of reminders differs between types of reminders, whether the reminder is personalized or general, and depending on the background of the students. In the worst cases, reminders can even increase procrastination.

Objective: The aim of this study was to test if personalized email reminders, as compared to general email reminders, affect the time to completion of scheduled online coursework. The personalized reminders included information on which page in the online material the participants ought to be on at the present point in time and the last page they were on during their last session. The general reminders only contained the first part of this information: where they ought to be at the present point in time.

Methods: Weekly email reminders were sent to all participants enrolled in an online program, which included 39 professional learners from three East African countries. All participants in the Online Education for Leaders in Nutrition and Sustainability program, which uses a question-based learning methodology, were randomly assigned to either personalized or general reminders. The structure of the study was AB-BA, so that group A received personalized reminders for the first unit, then general reminders for the rest of the course, while group B started with general reminders and received personalized reminders only in the third (and last) unit in the course.

Results: In total, 585 email reminders were distributed, of which 390 were general reminders and 195 were personalized. A Bayesian mixed-effects logistic regression was used to estimate the difference in the probability of being on time with one’s studies. The probability of being on time was 14 percentage points (95% credible interval 3%-25%) higher following personalized reminders compared to that following general reminders. For a course with 100 participants, this means 14 more students would be on time.

Conclusions: Personalized reminders had a greater positive effect than general reminders for a group of adults working full-time while enrolled in our online educational program. Considering how small the intervention was—adding a few words with the page number the student ought to be on to a reminder—we consider this effect fairly substantial. This intervention could be repeated manually by anyone and in large courses with some basic programming.