assessing back pain, healthy back behavior and its cognitive determinants among pupils in iran.

Aims: back pain is an important public health problem and the leading cause of adult disability in the worldwide; that is on the rise among the adolescent population. this study concentrated on assessing the back pain, healthy back behavior and its cognitive determinants among 5th-grade girls in iran.instruments & methods: this was a cross-sectional school-based study conducted in capital tehran`s region 22, through the convenience sampling of 610 pupils. a self-reported questionnaire was used to assess demographic information, back care knowledge, self-efficacy, fear-avoidance beliefs, and behaviours. descriptive statistical analysis included frequency and percentage. crosstabs and chi-square tests were used to broadly assess the data related to the presence of back pain and identify factors associated with back pain. the data was analyzed by spss.findings: in all 610 fifth-grade female elementary school children were entered into the study. the results showed that 23.6% of pupils (n=144) reported back pain during last week. in addition, only 1.8%, 33%, 18.5%, and 31.6% of participants had a high level of the back care knowledge, selfefficacy, belief, and behavior respectively. there was a significant relationship between the back pain and back behavior (p=0.004); and between back pain and self-efficacy (p