Background: Research has shown that the course of non-specific low back pain (LBP) is influenced by, among other factors, patients' self-management abilities. Therefore, clinical guidelines recommend stimulation of self-management. Enhancing patients' self-management potentially can improve patients' health outcomes and reduce future healthcare costs for non-specific LBP.

Objectives: Which characteristics and health outcomes are associated with activation for self-management in patients with non-specific LBP?

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Method: Patients with non-specific LBP applying for primary care physiotherapy were asked to participate. Multivariable linear regression analysis was performed to analyze the multivariable relationship between activation for self-management (Patient Activation Measure, range 0-100) and a range of characteristics, e.g., age, gender, and health outcomes, e.g., self-efficacy, pain catastrophizing.

Results: The median activation for self-management score of the patients with non-specific LBP (N = 208) was 63.10 (IQR = 19.30) points. The multivariable linear regression analysis revealed that higher self-efficacy scores (B = 0.54), female gender (B = 3.64), and a middle educational level compared with a high educational level (B = -5.47) were associated with better activation for self-management in patients with non-specific LBP. The goodness-of-fit of the model was 17.24% (R2 = 0.17).

Conclusions: Patients with better activation for self-management had better self-efficacy, had a higher educational level, and were more often female. However, given the explained variance better understanding of the factors that influence the complex construct of self-management behaviour in patients who are not doing well might be needed to identify possible barriers to engage in self-management.