*2.1. Recruitment and Sample*

The present study's data were derived from a 2012 representative survey of the German population with the assistance of the Independent Service for Surveys, Methods, and Analyses (USUMA Berlin). The sampling procedure, as a common and standardized procedure in German representative survey designs [22], included three stages of randomized selection, and thus yielded in a sample representative for the German general population. First, 258 representative sampling areas were selected out of a total of 53,000 areas from all parts of Germany, stratified according to counties and number of inhabitants [23]. Second, 4386 addresses were selected using a random-route-assisted procedure and, third, one randomly selected household member per address was personally contacted and supposed to respond in person for study participation. The survey was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Leipzig (Approval No. 072-11-07032011) and followed the ethical guidelines of the International Code of Marketing and Social Research Practice by the International Chamber of Commerce and the European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research. Oral informed assent and consent was obtained from the participants for ≥18 years and, for participants <18 years, informed consent was obtained from the parents, which is common in survey research in Germany. Following a face-to-face explanation of the study objectives, the procedure, and data protection, each participant received a questionnaire, which he or she completed himself or herself in the presence of the interviewer.

Of the 2555 participants who responded to the initial contact (response rate 58.3%), *n* = 1335 (52.3%) participants were employed at the time of the survey and provided data on experiences of workplace bullying derived from the "Intensity of Bullying Coming from Co-Workers" scale (MOB-K, see below [24]). As weight status was a central study variable, we omitted *n* = 20 participants owing to missing data on weight and height, and we further omitted *<sup>n</sup>* = 25 participants with underweight (BMI ≤ 18.5 kg/m2) owing to their small number, finally resulting in a study sample of *N* = 1290 participants (50.5% out of 2555 eligible individuals; 29.4% out of 4386 initially contacted individuals).
