Table 3.

Factors associated with the probability of expressing uncertainties: panel data analysis method

Hypothesized Factors	Patient Uncertainty Odds Ratio	Physician Uncertainty Odds Ratio
Compared with biomedical topics
Mental health topics	2.796 **	2.072 **
Psychosocial topics	0.302 **	0.469 **
Lifestyle and personal habits topics	0.56 *	0.845
Compared with physician-initiated topics
Patient initiation	2.599 **	1.16
Compared with visits for chronic conditions
Reason for visit was acute condition	0.522 **	0.764
Number of instances	1.181 **	1.143 **
Compared with patients age 65 – 74
Patient age 75 – 84	0.861	0.998
Patient age ≥ 85	1.191	0.46
Compared with Academic Medical Center
Managed care organization	0.731	0.552 *
Inner city solo	0.832	0.655
Log likelihood	2099.888	1607.02
Number of topics	2285	2284

^*p<0.05,

^**p<0.01

Note: Controlled for number of instances in topic, patient gender, education, years of patient-physician relationship, physician’s years in medical practice, physician’s specialty, and practice settings. Because none of these were statistically significant, they are not reported in the table.