Demographic and affective covariates of pain

Relationships of four demographic variables and five affective variables to eight attributes of low back pain were investigated in 251 patients by stepwise, multivariate analysis. The demographic variables are age, sex, race, and education. The affective variables are state anxiety, trait anxiety anxiety, hostility, and depression. Seven of the pain variables are from the factorially derived Low Back Pain Questionnaire. The eighth pain variable is a self-estimate of intensity. Relationships among demographic and pain variables are small and unsystematic. Hostility has a small, systematically inverse relation to pain variables, supporting theories relating low back pain to inhibition of anger. Anxiety has a small positive relationship, and depression has no relationship to pain variables. In general, the small relationships indicate that the Low Back Pain Questionnaire provides descriptions of pain that are not confounded by social characteristics or current emotional states of patients.