Table 1.

Descriptive statistics* of variables used (n=3861)

Variable	N	%	Variable	N	%
The holistic use of EM			Age
1	363	9.4	less than 20	143	3.7
2	1284	33.3	20s or 30s	894	23.2
3	1135	29.4	40s	762	19.7
4	699	18.1	50s	833	21.6
5	276	7.2	60s	575	14.9
6	82	2.1	70s	522	13.5
7	22	0.6	80s or more	132	3.4
The use of biomedical services			Marital status
Yes	1641	42.5	Single	613	15.9
No	2220	57.5	Married	2783	72.1
EM use frequency†			Widowed/divorced/separated	440	11.4
1 to 3 times	1389	36.0	Others	25	0.6
4 to 10 times	1289	33.4	Education
11 to 30 times	885	22.9	No formal education	279	7.2
30 times or more	298	7.7	Elementary school	557	14.4
Self-rated health status			Middle school	467	12.1
Very bad	103	2.7	High school	1215	31.5
Bad	1010	26.2	College or graduate school	1343	34.8
Fair	1651	42.8	Household income
Good	983	25.5	less than 1 million wons	733	19.0
Very good	114	3.0	1 to 1.9 million wons	789	20.4
Gender			2 to 2.9 million wons	831	21.5
Male	1161	30.1	3 to 3.9 million wons	615	15.9
Female	2700	69.9	4 to 4.9 million wons	446	11.6
			5 million wons or more	447	11.6

*The socio-demographic characteristics of EM users show that EM is being used very widely across different social groups in age, education and income.

†This refers to how many times a respondent has used EM services in the past 3 months. It is certain that, when a respondent uses EM less often, the respondent is less likely to use different treatment modalities of EM. However, a respondent who uses EM very often does not necessarily utilise different treatment modalities (eg, a respondent who uses only acupuncture many times).

EM, East Asian medicine.