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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2014 Nov 20.
Published in final edited form as: J Health Econ. 2011 May 23;30(4):832–841. doi: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2011.05.006

Table 2.

Descriptive Statistics of Study Population

Non-hospitalized peoplea (N=790) Hospitalized peoplea (N=969)
Individual characteristics
Mean SDb Mean SD
Age 51.9 8.3 52.8 9.1
Female 0.55 0.49 0.60 0.49
Income (>$70,000) 0.50 0.49 0.41 0.49
College educated 0.45 0.49 0.37 0.48
Union 0.47 0.49 0.54 0.49
Reporting to switch a hospital for future use 0.32 0.46
Importance weights on unmeasured hospital attributes
Original scalec Normalized weightsc
Mean SD Mean SD
Reputation 8.41 1.50 0.11 0.018
Medical services 8.78 1.49 0.12 0.020
Amenities 6.62 2.26 0.10 0.025
Out-of-pocket cost 7.55 2.19 0.08 0.024
a

Hospitalization status was based on the past one-year period and was identified using claims data supplied by the firm's third-party administrator.

b

Standard Deviation

c

The importance weights were originally measured on a 1 to 10 scale (1= not at all important). We normalized the weights within an individual by dividing a weight on a specific attribute by the sum of responses for all attributes.