Abstract:
The purpose of this research was to study media exposure, health self-care behaviors and service usage behaviors of private hospitals in Rayong province and to investigate the relationships between health self-care behavior and media exposure and service usage behaviors. This was a survey research, collecting data with a 400 private hospitals service users in Rayong province via an online questionnaire. The data was analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistics with Chi-Square Test. The research results revealed that most of the sample had a low level of private hospitals media exposure as well as had a good level in health literacy and a fair level in health behaviors of their health self-care behavior scores. For the private hospital services usage behaviors in Rayong Province, the results showed that most of the sample employed the service as out-patient department, the service usages once in a while, and life insurance treatment rights. Most used services of the internal medicine department, the cost per visit about 1,001-5,000 baht and came with family/relatives. Most of the sample made a decision by themselves to use private hospital services because the private hospitals provide good, fast, and impressive service. For the first hypothesis testing, the research results showed that there were statistically significant relationships with health self-care behaviors and the private hospitals media exposure in Rayong province in terms of time duration for media exposure at the 0.01 level, not including the type of media, the health related information types and the benefit gained. For the second hypothesis testing, the results showed that there were statistically significant relationships with health self-care behaviors and the private hospitals service usage behaviors in Rayong province in terms of the frequencies of hospitals service usages and the person following to the hospitals at the 0.05 level, not including the type of patients, expenses per time, persons influencing in the hospitals service usage and their reasons to use the hospitals services.