Development of a health literacy questionnaire for predicting non-specific neck pain in office worker

Abstract

The objective of this thesis was to develop a health literacy questionnaire for predicting non-specific neck pain in office workers. This thesis was divided into four stages: 1) systematic review of randomized control trials to gain insights into the effectiveness of education on the prevention and cure of non-specific neck and low back pain and to identify effective educational content to prevent and treat non-specific neck and low back pain; 2) the development of neck pain-specific health literacy questionnaire; 3) evaluation of the predictive validity of the neck pain-specific health literacy questionnaire; and 4) evaluation of the ability of neck pain-specific health literacy questionnaire to predict duration of recovery from non-specific neck pain in office workers.

The results showed that the education programs were not effective in preventing and treating neck pain as well as treating low back pain. Three education topics that may be effective in the prevention and treatment of neck and low back pain were identified, namely, function of the spine, information on activities, and information on coping with the problems. The neck pain-specific health literacy questionnaire comprised six questions, with total score ranging from 0 to 24. The questionnaire had acceptable psychometric properties and can differentiate between office workers with and without non-specific neck pain. The questionnaire had acceptable ability to predict incident non-specific neck pain, but was unable to predict duration of recovery from non-specific neck pain in office workers.