Original article
A Prospective Study of Neck, Shoulder, and Upper Back Pain Among Technical School Students Entering Working Life

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2009.11.200Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this prospective study was to relate the prevalence of neck, shoulder, and upper back pain to occupational and individual risk factors among a population of technical school students in their transition from school to working life. In addition, we wanted to assess the changes in pain prevalence during follow-up.

Methods

A cohort consisting of 173 technical school students was followed up during a 3-year period, from their last year of school through their first years of working life. Data on self-reported neck, shoulder, and upper back pain and factors such as mechanical exposure, perceived stress, and physical activity in leisure time were collected.

Results

A high prevalence of pain in the neck, shoulder, and upper back among the technical school students was found. There were however few students reporting severe pain. Reporting pain at baseline gave over three times higher risk of reporting it at follow-up. A high level of physical activity outside working hours gave a lower risk of reporting neck, shoulder, and upper back pain at follow-up. High and moderate levels of mechanical exposure and high stress level were not found to be risk factors for pain after entering working life.

Conclusion

Neck, shoulder, and upper back pain are common among adolescents and may persist into working life. These results may give potential for preventive efforts at a young age. There is still much uncertainty about the factors leading to musculoskeletal pain, and more research is needed on this topic.

Section snippets

Methods

The study population consisted of 420 technical school students from 13 schools in the greater Oslo area (85% of the 496 who were invited). Technical school students are defined as students enrolled in a public college that provides mostly employment preparation skills for trained labor. The students choose a specific occupational program and they are taught the skills needed to perform a particular job. The technical school students in this study were recruited to represent student

Factors related to neck, shoulder, and upper back pain

A high initial prevalence of neck, shoulder, and upper back pain was seen; 78% female and 47.5% male students reported at baseline that they had pain the past 4 weeks. Neck, shoulder and upper back pain decreases at the 1- and 3-year follow-up (Figure 1), but the significant gender difference remains.

Because of the significant gender difference in pain reports the univariate analysis was done separately for male and female students. The unadjusted logistic regression in Table 2, shows that

Discussion

The results show that a considerably higher number of female compared with male adolescents report neck, shoulder, and upper back pain. At the same time, males tend to report higher levels of mechanical exposure than females. These gender differences are significant at baseline and in both follow-up questionnaires. Several studies have revealed that females report significantly more pain than males, both in the young [6], [19] and adult populations [20], [21]. It has been shown in a previous

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by a grant from the NHO, Confederation of Norwegian Enterprises. We also thank Nina Østerås and Kristian Gould for helping with data collection at baseline and 1-year follow-up.

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