The focus of this study was on people among adults 40 and older in Taiwan and the effects of the perceived disease status and the rates of medical utilization, if they smoked cigarettes, chewed betel nuts, or drank alcoholic drinks. Besides these three kinds of factors, there were others that may affect the result such as the demographics and the social economy. For this reason, this study looked further into the net effects of the above three factors by controlling the other factors.
The data resources of this study came from the National Health Interview Survey (2001), and selected people over the age of 40 for the samples. This study was analyzed by statistical ways in Chi-square Test and Multiple Regression Analysis.
Results showed the following: (1) The rate is 29.6 percent for smoking, 25.8 percent for drinking and 10.3 percent for chewing in Taiwan 2001. And the rate for only one of the three factors is 22.4 percent, both of the three is 13.6 percent, and all of the three is 5.3 percent. (2) In the perceived disease status, the prevalence rates of one disease is 27.3 percent, two diseases is 14.2 percent, and over and above three diseases is 12.1 percent. In other words, the prevalence rates of people who were over the age of 40 had over and above one disease is very high, 53.6 percent, and the average is 0.98 diseases per person. (3) In the medical utilization, during the past year, the average of the hospitalization was 0.17 times per person, and the emergency treatment was 0.17 times. And during the past month, the average of outpatient services was 1.38 times per person. (4) The health risk behavior had a significant difference with the change of the
demographics and the social economy. The severe group in health risk behavior is as follows: younger, male, less-educated, unmarried, countryside, and Taipei area.
(5) By controlling the other factors, the health risk behavior didn?t have any significant affects about the number of diseases and the frequencies of emergency, but it had a significant negative affection in the frequencies of hospitalizations and outpatient treatments.
For the 5th point given above, the result didn?t match our expectation. It was probably related to the cross-section data which this study used to analyze. In more concrete speaking, people who had health risk behavior might have died already, if their illnesses were more serious. Thus the cross-section data just showed the people who were either truly healthy, or believed to be healthy, or had minor illnesses. And this reason led into the less medical utilization.
In this conclusion addressed above, this study advised the other researchers who will do the same kind of study in the future that they should analyze with a long- term traceable methods, and should add more factors into the study to show the effects clearly. This study also advised the health organizations that they should improve the physical examination for the people who had health risk behavior to understand their physical status explicitly.
