Duckett, Jane and Munro, Neil and Sutton, Mat Adam and Hunt, Kathryn
(2017).
Popular views of the Chinese health care system.
[Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex:
UK Data Archive.
10.5255/UKDA-SN-852131
This interdisciplinary project establishes a new collaboration among UK researchers and a leading Chinese social research team, to conduct the first major study of Chinese people's attitudes towards their health care. The project's core theoretical contribution is to understanding the relationships between attitudes and health-related behaviours, focussing particularly on how people evaluate their health system, their trust in doctors and the health system, and their utilization of preventive and curative health services. Previous quantitative research on health in China has examined the influence on utilization of age and gender, incomes, insurance protection, distance to health service providers and perceived health care needs. Yet work done in other countries has shown that attitudes, including performance evaluations and trust, can impact on people's decisions about when and where to use health services. At the same time, qualitative studies in China have suggested that people are often critical of performance and that there is a crisis of trust in doctors and the health care system. Our project is the first systematic study of these attitudes and how they influence utilization.
Data description (abstract)
This file provides bilingual Chinese-English transcripts of nine focus group discussions (FGDs) carried out in three Chinese cities in June and July 2012. The focus groups were commissioned by the authors from the Research Center for Contemporary China (RCCC) at Peking University as part of the ESRC project ‘Performance evaluations, trust and utilization of health care in China: understanding relationships between attitudes and health-related behaviour’. Local residents over the age of 30 took part in the discussions, which were moderated by a senior researcher from RCCC. The FGDs dealt with five main issues: how people know about changes in the health care system changes; how people make decisions to see a doctor when they are unwell; health care system evaluations; trust in doctors and the health care system; and what kind of a system people would like. The FGDs use a series of fictional scenarios (vignettes) to elicit responses concerning what influences people’s decisions about going to a doctor when they are unwell.
| Data creators: |
| Creator Name |
Affiliation |
ORCID (as URL) |
| Duckett Jane |
University of Glasgow |
|
| Munro Neil |
University of Glasgow |
|
| Sutton Mat Adam |
University of Manchester |
|
| Hunt Kathryn |
University of Glasgow |
|
|
| Contributors: |
| Name |
Affiliation |
ORCID (as URL) |
| Shen Mingming |
Peking University |
|
| Chai Jingjing |
Peking University |
|
| Lv Aofei |
University of Amsterdam |
|
| Wang Hua |
University of Glasgow |
|
| Davis Kenrick |
|
|
|
| Sponsors: |
Economic and Social Research Council
|
| Grant reference: |
ES/J011487/1
|
| Topic classification: |
Social welfare policy and systems
Politics
Health
|
| Keywords: |
access to health services, health care facilities, health behaviour, China, interpersonal trust, social values
|
| Project title: |
Performance evaluations, trust and utilization of health care in China: understanding relationships between attitudes and health-related behaviour
|
| Grant holders: |
Jane Duckett, Neil Munro, Kate Hunt, Matthew Sutton
|
| Project dates: |
| From | To |
|---|
| 13 February 2012 | 13 August 2015 |
|
| Date published: |
15 Dec 2015 12:22
|
| Last modified: |
14 Jul 2017 13:09
|
| Collection period: |
| Date from: | Date to: |
|---|
| 25 February 2012 | 24 August 2015 |
|
| Geographical area: |
Yueyang in Hunan Province, Chifeng in Inner Mongolia, and Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province |
| Country: |
China |
| Spatial unit: |
Administrative > Counties
Administrative > Countries
Administrative > Districts (Metropolitan) |
| Data collection method: |
The three cities chosen for focus group discussions, Chifeng, Yueyang and Shaoxing, represented respectively a city below the national average, close to the average and above the average in terms of GDP per capita. Two stratifications were used to select participants (see Focus Group Participant Profiles for details):
Stratification One: of the general population by location and individual circumstances. This stratification was used in Chifeng and Shaoxing; all participants were local residents. In Chifeng, two discussions was conducted in the city itself and one discussion in a rural area under the city’s jurisdiction. In Shaoxing, one discussion was conducted in the city itself and one in a rural village within the city’s jurisdiction.
Stratification Two: of patients by individual circumstances. This stratification was used in Yueyang. The participants in each of the four focus groups were screened by asking whether they had had contact with the health care system during the last two weeks in connection with an injury or illness; and what type of medical insurance they possessed. The initial intention was to stratify patients according to whether they reported suffering acute or chronic conditions. However, the difficulty of recruiting participants prevented this. The stratification of patients was thus according to their type of insurance. Nearly all participants on the first day of discussions (#4 and #5) had medical insurance equivalent to Urban Employees Basic Medical Insurance, whilst participants on the second day of discussions (#6 and #7) did not have this level of insurance. Most of these were members of the Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme, which gives them only limited entitlements to reimbursement of medical expenses in Yueyang. |
| Observation unit: |
Individual |
| Kind of data: |
Text |
| Type of data: |
Qualitative and mixed methods data |
| Resource language: |
English, Chinese |
|
| Data sourcing, processing and preparation: |
The focus group discussions were recorded in audio format and then transcribed into Chinese characters by professional transcribers familiar with the local dialect under the direction of the Research Center for Contemporary China at Peking University. The Chinese language transcripts were then translated in English by two native speakers, Aofei Lv and Hua Wang, both then PhD students at the University of Glasgow, to produce for each focus group discussion a bilingual focus group transcript, a file of background information collected about the participants as well as medical conditions of the respondents from Yueyang. To improve the facility of English expression, the transcripts were revised again by Kenrick Davis, a native speaker of English fluent also in Mandarin. All personal identifiers were removed from the transcripts, and individuals are referred to by numbers assigned arbitrarily during the transcription process. The data file also includes the focus group discussion guide, instructions for recruitment and stratification, plain language statement and consent form, as well as a table of contents,
|
| Rights owners: |
| Name |
Affiliation |
ORCID (as URL) |
| Duckett Jane |
University of Glasgow |
|
|
| Contact: |
|
| Notes on access: |
The Data Collection is available for download to users registered with the UK Data Service.
|
| Publisher: |
UK Data Archive
|
| Last modified: |
14 Jul 2017 13:09
|
|
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