Prevalence and Determinants of Low Back Pain among Lecturers: A Quantitative Approach

Introduction: Lower back pain is one of the most common work-related problems among teaching professionals in both developed and developing nations and it often leads to absenteeism or early retirement of workers. Thus the aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence and associated risk factors of low back pain among academic staff.

Methods: An institutional based cross-sectional study was adopted. Five faculties were randomly selected in Ekiti State University, Nigeria and a self-structured questionnaire was purposively administered; depending on interest and availability of the respondents. The data was explored and Chi-square analysis alongside binary logistic regression was applied in order to evaluate the relationship between low back pain and some associated factors. Analysis was carried out in SPSS version 20.

Results: This study comprises 127 lecturers with a mean age of (41.95±9.42). There were more males (55.9%) than females. More than thirty six percent of the lecturers had teaching experience below 5 years while 44.9% had 5 to 10 years and 18.9% had above 10 years of teaching experience. The results show that age, gender, prolonged sitting and prolonged standing significantly (p-value <.05) associated with occurrence of low back pain among lecturers while mixed teaching posture serves a protective against low back pain.

Conclusion: The results reveal a very high prevalence of low back pain. Findings show that female gender, old age and inappropriate work postures are the risk factors of low back pain. It is suggested that effort should be to ameliorate occupational stress among academic staff.