What do people believe to be the cause of low back pain? A scoping review

•There is a high variation in measuring causal beliefs about low back pain.•No measurement exists that clearly isolates causal beliefs from other belief domains.•There is a lack of studies exploring longitudinal relationships between causal beliefs and health outcomes.•Causal beliefs are just one element of a complex beliefs construct, and there is very little quantitative evidence from which its unique relevance can be judged.