Self-management of musculoskeletal hand pain and hand problems in community-dwelling adults aged 50 years and older: results from a cross-sectional study in a UK population

Table 5 Socio-demographic data for the survey population with hand problems, stratified by consultation (n = 1811)

	Not consulted HCP past year (n = 1028)	Consulted HCP past year (n = 783)
Mean (sd) age	67.7 (9.7)	65.4 (9.4)
Gender – female	736 (72 %)	531 (68 %)
Socio-economic classification (1/2/3)^a	153 (17 %)/133 (15 %)/603 (68 %)	104 (16 %)/95 (14 %)/465 (70 %)
Living alone (yes)	281 (29 %)	215 (29 %)
Mean (sd) age left school	14.9 (1.0)	15.0 (1.0)
Went on to FT ed (yes)	109 (11 %)	68 (9 %)
Adult qualifications (yes)	294 (29 %)	207 (27 %)
Most problematic hand ^b	445 (44 %)/208 (21 %)/348 (35 %)	304 (40 %)/164 (22 %)/293 (38 %)

HCP healthcare professional, sd standard deviation
^athe three class version of the National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (NS-SEC) was used [36]: 1 = higher managerial/professional and lower managerial/professional occupations; 2 = intermediate occupations; 3 = lower supervisory/technical, semi-routine and routine occupations; FT ed full time education
^bright/left/both; data subject to missing data (although questionnaires were returned by 1811 people, not all of the questions within the questionnaires had been completed by every respondent)

ISSN: 1471-2474