The working positions of schoolchildren

A systematic review of posture and psychosocial factors as contributors to upper quadrant musculoskeletal pain in children and adolescents

“…Ariens, Van Mechelen, and Bongers (2000) and Ariens, Bongers, and Hoogendoorn (2001) have confirmed that neck flexion, arm position, and the duration of sitting have a positive association with the occurrence of neck pain in the adult population. School learners are becoming more exposed to different information technologies from a young age and subsequently are exposed more to prolonged poor sitting posture (Briggs, Straker, and Grieg, 2004;Grieg, Straker, and Briggs, 2005;Ramos, James, and Bear-Lehman, 2005;Storr-Paulsen and Aagaard-Hensen, 1994). Studies have reported on the positive relationship between time spent sitting in front of a computer and the prevalence of musculoskeletal pain experienced by children (Harris and Straker, 2000;Jacobs and Baker, 2002).…”

Children have less variable postures and muscle activities when using new electronic information technology compared with old paper-based information technology

“…Danish school children were reported to spend 57% of their seated time interacting with old IT in a forward flexed posture (reading or writing) (Storr-Paulsen and Aagard-Hensen, 1994). Mandal (1982) reported that school furniture appeared to be designed for the backward leaning posture, rather than the forward leaning posture that children adopted during written work.…”

Effects of a Two-School-Year Multifactorial Back Education Program in Elementary Schoolchildren

“…Three other intervention studies had methodologic restrictions, such as limited participants, 21 a nonrandomized study design, 17 and a relatively short implementation time. 20 It was concluded that intervention studies in the elementary school are promising but too limited to formulate evidence-based guidelines. 8 -9 However, in contrast to the promising aspects of early back education, Burton 23 warned for a possible increase of children's fearavoidance beliefs due to increased awareness.…”

“…16 Focusing on the results of school-based interventions, in a recent review, 9 a limited number of multifactorial intervention studies could be located. [17][18][19][20][21] In the study of Cardon et al, 18 the implementation of a 6-week back education program had a significant impact on the use of back education principles up to 1 year. However, a transfer of postural principles into the daily unconscious sitting behavior of the child was not found.…”