Good agreement was found between self-reported and register information on sickness absence. Self-reported data on sickness absence may be useful in common epidemiological applications.

This study suggests prevention of some work and lifestyle factors as general measures to reduce long-term sick-listing among women in the public sector.

Persons with a positive prediction should get help to realise their potential for RTW. Offering traditional rehabilitation measures to a person with a negative prediction of his/her RTW, could be a waste of resources if done ahead of improving self-confidence and view of what is possible. The problems in this group might decrease or be easier to handle if decisions about the future are taken within a year.

The findings suggest that the combination of gainful employment and children does not influence the risk of repeated sick-leave spells or long-term sickness absence among married/cohabiting publicly employed women. However, this was not true for single women with children, which indicates that their circumstances are particularly strained.

Objective: Contingent self-esteem has been assumed to be a risk for burnout-related disorders, and a contingent self-worth notion of job burnout was applied to study the prospective relationship between job burnout and registered episodes of sickness absence of 60 consecutive days. Methods: Job burnout was defined as being in the high quartiles on the Maslach Burnout Inventory -General Survey (MBI-GS) scales of exhaustion and cynicism and, in addition, as being above the median on a scale for performance-based self-esteem. Another high exhaustion-cynicism group, a "job wornout" group, was defined as being high on the same MBI-GS scales but having performance-based self-esteem scores below the median. Data were analyzed by a multivariate, logistic regression approach. Participants: 4,109 public employees in Sweden. Results: The job burnout group showed an over-risk of long-term sickness absence incidence, both compared with a low exhaustion-cynicism reference group and with the job wornout group after adjustment for several potential confounders. No association with incidence of long-term sickness absence was found for the job wornout group. Conclusions: The differential vulnerability to long-term sickness absence among high exhaustion-cynicism groups suggests that a self-worth perspective of job burnout can be advantageous for prevention of the costly long-term sickness absences.