Page 18 - NHMS2015-tradisional and complementary medicine volume IV

Traditional and Complementary Medicine (T&CM)
VOLUME IV

Study Instrument

A bilingual (Malay and English) questionnaire was constructed based on the

questionnaire used in a nationwide T&CM survey carried out in 2004. This
questionnaire is divided into 2 sections. The first section, N1, records the histories of

T&CM use in general; ever use of any practice in the respondents‟ life time and used

within the last twelve months. This section also documents whether the practices used
or obtained is with or without consultation of a practitioner. Section 2, N2, gathers

information on types of T&CM practices used within the last twelve months; which the

respondents may choose more than one practice that they have used. For this study,
the answers were close-ended with selection comprising of a pre-set list of practices as

described in Table 1. Supplementary product was added as an extra variable to
differentiate its use from herbal product.

For each reported T&CM practice, the questionnaire requires the documentation of the

place or facility where the service of T&CM is obtained, the actual amount of money

paid for the service in the last six months, the amount that they are willing to pay for the
service for one session, and the purpose of use for each T&CM practice, whether it is

solely for wellness, for treatment or for both reasons (wellness and treatment) of the
mentioned disease or health problem.

The questions were prepared and customised to harmonise with the format in the

mobile and handheld devices that are used by the interviewers on the field. A pre-test

for this questionnaire was carried out to evaluate the reliability of the questions. In order
to assist the identification of the type of practice, a separate book that defined and

described the practices (Appendix 1) and a flash card (Appendix 2) were provided to the
interviewers. A book on the codes for the type of illnesses were also supplied (Appendix

3).

Data collection

Before the implementation of data collection, scouts were identified from the staff of the

District Health Officer in the selected districts. These scouts identified and tagged the

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NATIONAL HEALTH AND MORBIDITY SURVEY 2015 MINISTRY OF HEALTH MALAYSIA