Investigating Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use Among Seniors
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Objectives: Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is used regularly by 70% of Canadians, 2,3 but when compared to younger users ofCAM, seniors tend to use it less frequently. Using a phenomenological approach, this study sought to explore the attitudes and beliefs of seniors towards the use ofCAM. Methods: This qualitative study used either in-depth personal interviews or focus group interviews as the primary means of data collection. Participants in the study were individuals who had either usedCAM in the past, or who were currently usingCAM. Results: Participants described that they would use conventional treatment for pathological disease, but would prefer to useCAM in certain circumstances as it was perceived to be a more natural approach. Exercise was also described as a form ofCAM. Deterrents forCAM use include: limited scientific evidence; cost; and the attitudes of others (e.g., physicians, the public). Conclusion: Participants felt that they had positive experiences usingCAM as an adjunct to conventional medicine, and felt that they had no personal barriers to accessingCAM. A major deterrent ofCAM use was the limited scientific evidence, while minor factors included cost and the attitudes of others. Open discussion aboutCAM use should take place between physician and patients.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".