Table 3.

Relative risk of hand pain as a prevalence ratio (PR) with a 95% confidence interval (95% CI) in unadjusted Model #1 and fully adjusted Model #5

Exposure of interest and covariates	Categories / Units	Unadjusted PR (95% CI) for hand pain (Model #1)	Adjusted PR (95% CI) for hand pain (Model #5)
Manual handling operations	Often	3.254 (2.945–3.595)	2.260 (2.002–2.551)
	Sometimes	1.602 (1.383–1.855)	1.343 (1.149–1.571)
	Rarely	1.206 (1.015–1.433)	1.172 (0.981–1.400)
	Never (ref.)	1 (ref.)	1 (ref.)
Manual lifting of heavy loads	Often		1.341 (1.183–1.520)
	Sometimes		1.149 (1.003–1.317)
	Rarely		0.959 (0.844–1.089)
	Never (ref.)		1 (ref.)
Overhead work	Often		1.386 (1.229–1.563)
	Rarely (ref.)		1 (ref.)
Cold; heat; wet humidity; draught	Often		1.496 (1.340–1.669)
	Sometimes		1.191 (1.056–1.343)
	Rarely		0.985 (0.856–1.133)
	Never (ref.)		1 (ref.)
Age	Per year		1.010 (1.007–1.014)
Gender	Women / men (ref.)		1.587 (1.464–1.721)
Actual weekly working hours	Per hour		0.988 (0.982–0.994)
Psychosocial workload index (Kroll 2011) [26]	Per index-point		1.012 (1.009–1.016)

The following confounder variables were included in the fully adjusted model: gender; manual lifting of heavy loads; overhead work; climatic factors; age; actual weekly working hours; and an index for psychosocial workload based on Kroll (2011) [26]. The regression models include N = 14,299 subjects (complete case analysis)

ref. Reference group, PR Prevalence ratio, 95% CI 95% confidence interval