ABSTRACT
Background: Musculoskeletal pain is a common disorder among both the adult and adolescent population. There have been studies on the prevalence of musculoskeletal pain and associated factors among the adolescent population. Poorly designed classroom furniture is one of the risk factors of musculoskeletal pain. Previous studies have been carried out to determine the association between classroom furniture and development of musculoskeletal pain. However, report is lacking on the relationship of the classroom furniture on the spine, sitting posture and the development of musculoskeletal pain.
Aim: The aim of this study is to determine the prevalence of musculoskeletal pain (low back pain and other associated pain such as neck pain, shoulder pain) and its association with classroom furniture and sitting posture among undergraduate students of University of Benin, Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria.
Methods: Simple random sampling technique (fish bowl method) was used to select seven (7) faculties within University of Benin, Benin City, Multistage cluster sampling was used to select respondents for this study. The sample size recruited for this study was 404. An adapted version of the Nordic Musculoskeletal questionnaire was used to obtain information on socio-demographic data, classroom furniture and sitting posture and occurrence of musculoskeletal pain. Descriptive and inferential statistics of Pearson’s correlation and Chi-Square were used to summarize the data. Alpha level was set at 0.05.
Results: Low back pain was the most prevalent musculoskeletal symptom (75.7%) in this study and shoulder pain were the least prevalent musculoskeletal symptom (38.6%). Low back and shoulder pain was not significantly correlated with sitting posture but there was significant relationship between sitting posture and the prevalence of neck pain.
(x2 = 14.304, ρ = 0.046).
