Sydney (IANS): You may take longer to recover from a back injury if you are stressed over your job or are living alone, according to a recent study.

University of Queensland's (UQ) Nick Penney examined the relationship between lower back pain and psychological, physiological and social factors.

The five-year study showed that people working in a high-demand but low control environment such as an assembly line, or who had an unhelpful management style at work, were more likely to suffer from back pain and found it harder to recover.

Accordingly, Penney developed a questionnaire that was answered by 91 research participants in the Sunshine Coast, and a further 40 from the Bay of Plenty in New Zealand.

He found that the extent of recovery depended more on the context surrounding the injury than the injury itself.

"For example, if someone agreed that back pain was dominating their life, they appeared to have a worse recovery prognosis than someone who disagreed," he said.

The study showed that associated psychological and social factors of back pain sufferers were adequate for predicting the recovery outcome and length of time without further diagnostic testing, said an UQ release.

However, Penney said that diagnostic tools such as X-rays were still necessary in some cases where a significant trauma was sustained, such as a fall of a metre or more onto concrete, or when an underlying disease may present, known as 'red flags'.