Consulting a Complementary and Alternative Medical Practitioner: A Systematic Inventory of Motives Among French Patients

Abstract

Objectives:

To classify people’s motives for seeking care from complementary and alternative medicine practitioners. Participants were asked about a wide variety of motives representing all eight motivational states described in Reversal Theory (RT): telic, paratelic, conformist, negativist, mastery, sympathy, autic, and alloic.

Design:

Data from a convenience sample of 256 participants was examined using factorial techniques.

Results:

Six factors were evidenced that were easily interpretable in the RT framework. Participants perceived their motives largely in terms of goals and means, and within this domain they focused more on the goals (i.e., telic motives were more important than paratelic ones). Paratelic motives were, however, not unimportant: they ranked third. Participants also perceived their motives in terms of rules and constraints, and within this domain they focused more on rules (i.e., conformist motives were more important than negativist ones). Participants, finally, perceived their motives in terms of the combined domains of relationships and exchanges with others, namely, acting out of concern for others (alloic sympathy) as well as for themselves (autic mastery).

Conclusions:

If the six-factor structure is proved applicable, the six corresponding subscales could be used for systematically comparing motives among different types of patients, regarding different types of therapies, and among patients from different cultures.