ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To investigate symptom prevalence, risk factor, and relationship between job stress and health-related quality of life in visual display terminal (VDT) workers with low back pain. METHOD: 5,005 people aged from 28 to 59 without neck or upper extremity pain, were enrolled and their general characteristics, working period, personal history like smoking, drinking, type of leisure and average housework time were collected via a questionnaire survey. The job stress and the health-related quality of life were measured by using the Korean Occupational Stress Scale (KOSS) and the Korean Short Form Health Survey-36 (KSF-36) respectively. The relationship between general characteristics, working period, personal history, KOSS score, and KSF-36 score were statistically analyzed. RESULTS: The average age of questionnaire respondents was 43.4 years old. Twenty-seven and ninety-one (2,791) VDT workers responded to have experienced low back pain in past 1 year. The symptom prevalence was 58.2%. The KOSS score of all VDT workers was higher than reference range. There were moderate negative correlations between KOSS score and subscale score of KSF-36 like vitality, mental health, and mental component summary in all groups. In a multivariate analysis of all subjects, younger age, female, type of leisure except sports activity, and feeling of body loading were independently associated with low back pain of VDT workers. CONCLUSION: This study provides the basic data about the relationship between job stress and health-related quality of life of VDT workers as well as risk factors of low back pain in VDT workers.