DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.7205402.v1
title: Database.sav

description: The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of School of Public Health, Sichuan University. Informed consent was obtained from each participant following a detail explanation about the purpose of the study.<br>This cross-sectional study was conducted by trained investigators (medical and public health students and community volunteers) in Sichuan province, from January to August in 2014. <br>Measure<br>A multistage stratified random sampling method was used. In the first stage, three cities in Sichuan Province were randomly selected. In the second stage, a city district and a county were randomly selected from each city. In the third stage, two communities or townships were randomly selected from each city district or county. In the fourth stage, we randomly selected 90 residents in each community or township and asked about their choices of PCFs as the initial contact for medical care during their latest illness episode. Residents who were 18 years old and above and had resided in the community/town for at least 6 months were eligible to participate.<br>The investigators took an average of 15 minutes to interview each participant. Questionnaires were checked by investigators immediately after the survey for completeness. <br>A total of 1,080 residents were interviewed (540 urban and 540 rural). Because the present survey focused on residents’ choices of PCFs for the first treatment during the latest illness episode, only those who sought medical treatment were used in the analysis and 165 residents (81 urban and 84 rural) were excluded for not seeking medical treatment during the latest illness episode. The final sample included 915 residents (459 urban and 456 rural). <strong> <br></strong> Questionnaire<br>Respondent characteristics, provider of initial treatment and principal reason for the choice were collected.Respondent characteristics were collected, including socio-demographic characteristics, walking time (minutes) from home to the nearest PCFs and self-reported health status. Socio-demographic characteristics included age, gender, marital status, employment status, education, status of medical insurance, per capita annual income of household and individual annual income. The places of care for the initial treatment were categorized into two basic types: PCFs and higher-tier hospitals. For residents who chose to receive initial treatment at medical institutions, we asked them to select principal reason for the choice, including convenience, whether they felt that the charges were reasonable, quality of care, trust in doctors, good patient-doctor communication, prior experience with the doctors, and the medical insurance designation status of the facility. <br>Data were entered using the Epidata 3.1 database and were analyzed using the IBM SPSS version 23.0. We reported means and SDs for continuous variables and percentages for categorical variables. Pearson’s Chi-square tests or Fisher’s exact test was used to assess the differences in categorical variables. We conducted multivariable logistic regression models to identify the factors associated with rural or urban residents’ decisions about whether to seek care at PCFs for the initial treatment. The dependent variable was whether the residents used PCFs (0 for no and 1 for yes). The odds ratio (OR) was reported along with 95% confidence interval (CI). Results with a p-value of &lt;0.05 were considered statistically significant. <br><br> <br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>