Abstract
In 2000, Japan's long-term care insurance system (LTCIS) switched the emphasis from family care to social care. This study verifies the extent to which the necessary knowledge has been established by gender and age group in the past quarter of a century and to obtain information that will contribute to improving the quality of the LTCIS.
This study is a cross-sectional survey, with an anonymous questionnaire conducted on a total of 1,008 people using the national monitoring system of a web research company. The survey comprised basic information, 18 questions to check the level of knowledge and open-response questions. Logistic regression analysis and analysis of variance were used for quantitative analysis. The qualitative analysis was conducted using KH Coder co-occurrence network analysis (CONA) to clarify the context of various opinions regarding the operation of long-term care insurance. Consequently, scores for age and cohabitation with parents were significantly high, and the use of local government public relations and the Internet (IN) increased the scores. Scores were significantly higher for women in their 20s, 50s, and ages 60-64. Main causes and interaction with information media differed significantly by gender and age group, with women collecting information from IN and books, especially among those in their 50s and ages 60-64. The CONA analysis strongly emphasized the importance of information media and the context of awareness of the LTCIS. Furthermore, a comparison of questions derived from public relations of ordinance-designated cities and questions derived from other sources showed that the former had a higher percentage of correct answers and was highly significant, indicating that enhancing and expanding the content of local government public relations is effective in improving the level of knowledge of the LTCIS.
