Healthy lower backs in the construction industry in Sweden

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Abstract
This corss-sectional study exmaines the relationship between healthy lower and psychosocial and physical factors in a random sample of 1773 male construction workers. Infoamtion on lower back status, lifestyle habits, stress, psychosomatic and psychological symptoms, psychosocizal demands and resoruces and physical workload were collected by means of a postal questionnaire. Measures of psycholocial and physical factors were based on factor analysis of the data. The criterion variable ‘healthy lower back’ (HLB)—no lifetime history of low back pain—proved to be valid compared with an interview and a physical examination. A total of 216 workers (12%) reported HLB. The prevalance rate decreased significantly with increasing age. The prevalence rate of HLB was 6% among workers reporting high stress levels. It was postively influenced when there was a balance between demands and resoruces. A low level of physical workload also increased the prevalence rate of HLB. When age, lifestyle and physical factors were kept constant in a multivariate analysis high scores on the discretions index and low scores on eh psychosomatic, psychological and stress indices cosntributed significantly to an increase prevalence rate of HLB.