The causes of low back pain: a network analysis

Beliefs regarding the cause of low back pain differ between individual sufferers and health care professionals. One consequence of this is the potential acquisition of maladaptive attitudes and behaviour in relation to pain, and increases in the utilisation of primary care services (Health Expect.3(3) (2000) 161). Methods that have been used to elicit the causal interpretation of social phenomena are varied yet they are unable to categorically demonstrate the different weightings or levels of importance that individuals may assign. The diagram method of network analysis allows individuals to spontaneously consider pathways they believe to be critical to a target event and to determine the strength of those pathways.