• Journal of the Korean Data and Information Science Society
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.61-70
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• 2010

Today modern people have been searching on managing themselves in easy ways without side-effects to lead a healthy and quality life, accordingly concerns about complementary and alternative medicine have been increasing. The scientific term' complementary and alternative medicine' has been originally used in the US and has become the general term for natural treatment of medical methods, which can be suggested as an alternative solution to modern medical problems. There should be a study based on users' subjectivity to reinvigorate complementary and alternative medicine more than it does now. The purpose of this study is to offer basic materials when assessing practical applications on complementary and alternative medicine using the Q method which is subjective pattern analysis, help understand features of complementary and alternative therapy according to patterns, and find out preferences for patterns of complementary and alternative therapy. As a result patterns of complementary and alternative medicine were classified into three types. Firstly, type I prefers to biological/herbal treatment. Secondly, type II prefers to mixed treatments. Thirdly, type III prefers to manual healing.