Baseline characteristics of the eligible study population and the study base.
| Eligible study population with shoulder lesions (n=7644) | Study base Employed or self-employed on 1 January 2006 (n=1 210 231) | |
| Age group (years) (%) | 48.4 (48.3 to 48.5) | 44.70 (44.68 to 48.71) |
| 30–39 | 14.0 | 31.0 |
| 40–49 | 35.9 | 35.8 |
| 50–59 | 50.1 | 33.2 |
| Gender (%) | ||
| Women | 55.8 | 50.0 |
| Education (%) | ||
| Primary | 28.1 | 17.6 |
| Secondary | 53.8 | 42.0 |
| Tertiary | 18.1 | 40.5 |
| Region of Finland | ||
| Southern | 22.6 | 30.5 |
| Western | 22.3 | 22.2 |
| Eastern | 27.3 | 24.6 |
| Northern | 27.6 | 22.7 |
| Employment sector (%) | ||
| Private, domestic | 48.3 | 54.6 |
| Private, foreign | 8.6 | 8.3 |
| Public | 40.5 | 33.9 |
| Other | 2.6 | 3.2 |
| Occupation (%) | ||
| Upper-level non-manual occupations | ||
| Managers | 1.9 | 5.6 |
| Professionals | 5.4 | 17.9 |
| Lower-level non-manual occupations | ||
| Technicians | 11.8 | 19.2 |
| Office and customer workers | 7.9 | 8.2 |
| Service, care and sales workers | 20.1 | 15.1 |
| Manual occupations | ||
| Agricultural workers | 5.2 | 4.2 |
| Construction, metal and woodworkers | 16.2 | 11.7 |
| Machine operators and assemblers | 16.3 | 10.4 |
| Unskilled manual workers | 15.2 | 7.7 |
| Work-related exposures (%) | ||
| Heavy lifting | 21.9 | 14.8 |
| Working with hands above shoulder level | 20.5 | 14.3 |
| Work requiring high hand force | 31.7 | 20.6 |
| High job demands | 37.1 | 36.8 |
| Low job control | 71.9 | 53.8 |