| dc.description.abstract | Background: The general population’s beliefs and expectations about illness, and then their expectations about the duration of the illness have an importance on how the illness progress. In the last 20 years, there have been multiple mass media campaigns about back pain, increased knowledge among health professionals, and increased attention in media has given more knowledge-based information to the general population. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to study whether beliefs, expectations, and knowledge about back pain in the general population have changed across the years. Method: Literature study. The search was done in Medline, Embase, and APA PsycInfo. The main search terms were: “lower back pain”, “general population”, “belief”, and “expectations”. The different outcome measures were compared with each other in seven different categories: Attitudes, activity, treatment, posture/injury, sick leave/ disability, and imaging diagnostics. We chose studies prior and after 2010 to represent any changes across the years. Result: In total, it was 90 unique articles. Following examination of titles and abstracts, 67 of them were excluded. Together with four articles from other sources, 27 articles were red in full text and included. In the category activity, there seemed to be a bit more knowledge and better beliefs in the period after 2010. In general, we did not find significant changes in beliefs, knowledge, or expectations about lower back pain in the different categories. Conclusion: This study found no real change in beliefs, expectations, or knowledge about back pain in the last 20 years that were investigated. | nob |