The data for this study were obtained from 248 valid patient questionnaires collected by the project team members at third-level grade-A hospitals in Guangzhou by random sampling from September to December 2021. Before the implementation of the questionnaire, the investigators explained the study to the hospital's medical staff and patients, and all participants provided written informed consent. Ethical approvals were obtained by the Ethical Review Committee of the China Guangzhou Medical University. The questionnaire data consists of two parts. The first part includes the basic information of the patient, and the second part includes the choice tendency of patients' medical decision-making. The specific questionnaire design is shown in Appendix A .
The predictor variables consisted of a set of demographic and study variables that were selected based on the literature. The demographic variables (19 (link)) include patients' gender, age, education, religion, marital status, and the number of children, family annual income, and the main source of income. Study variables include the condition and severity of any disease (20 (link), 21 (link)), the ratio of family monthly medical expenses to income (within 5 years) (22 (link)), and medical insurance status (23 (link)).
The outcome variable was the patients' medical decision-making choice tendency. According to the principle of optimization, the choice tendency of medical decision-making is set into four aspects, namely, treatment effect, treatment cost, treatment side effect, and treatment experience (8 ). Among them, the choice tendency of each category was sorted by scale (1 = very important, 2 = important, 3 = low importance, 4 = not important at all).
The predictor variables consisted of a set of demographic and study variables that were selected based on the literature. The demographic variables (19 (link)) include patients' gender, age, education, religion, marital status, and the number of children, family annual income, and the main source of income. Study variables include the condition and severity of any disease (20 (link), 21 (link)), the ratio of family monthly medical expenses to income (within 5 years) (22 (link)), and medical insurance status (23 (link)).
The outcome variable was the patients' medical decision-making choice tendency. According to the principle of optimization, the choice tendency of medical decision-making is set into four aspects, namely, treatment effect, treatment cost, treatment side effect, and treatment experience (8 ). Among them, the choice tendency of each category was sorted by scale (1 = very important, 2 = important, 3 = low importance, 4 = not important at all).
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