Higher low back and neck pain in final year Swiss health professions’ students: worrying susceptibilities identified in a multi-centre comparison to the national population

Table 1 Socio-demographic characteristics and prevalence of back pain and neck pain in the Swiss Health Survey^a and in the survey of final year health professions students

Variable	SHS	Nat-ABBE	P
Back pain (%)			0.000
No	60.0	39.0
Yes	40.0	61.0
Neck pain (%)			0.000
No	63.6	40.2
Yes	36.4	59.8
Gender (%)			0.000
Women	51.0	88.1
Men	49.0	11.9
Age group (%)			0.000
< 21	7.2	0.1
21–30	15.1	94.7
31–40	15.8	3.5
41–50	20.3	1.5
> 50	41.6	0.3
Education (%)			0.000
Primary	18.0	0.0
Secondary	53.4	100.0
Tertiary	28.6	0.0
Sample size	21,597	1848
Population size	6,838,268

^aPercentages based on population weighted data. Four week prevalence for back pain and neck pain. P-values from design-based F-test
Source: Swiss Federal Statistical Office, Swiss Health Survey (SHS) 2012. Nat-ABBE coordination group, National Graduate Survey of Health Professionals from Universities of Applied Sciences 2016, 2017 (Nat-ABBE)

ISSN: 1471-2458