| As HIV/AIDS has been worldwide problem, more attention should be paid to the role that health care seeking behavior of patients with STDs plays in the prevention and control of STD/HIV. However, in contrast with the researches focusing on diagnosis, treatment, risk behavior and epidemic tendency of STDs, few theoretical and empirical work has been done to study the health seeking behavior of patients both at home and abroad. With the resurgent of STDs in our country since 1977, health care seeking behavior of STD patients has been seen in the Chinese literature recently, but thorough and theoretical research about it has not been carried out yet. Under the challenging of such background with the remarkably increasing incidence and new cases of STDs and HIV reported in our country, a quantitative study combined with qualitative one has been conducted to elucidate the patterns and influencing factors of health care seeking behavior about STD patients in Beijing and Jinan of Shandong province. Four subjects were included in the study: long distance truck drivers, STD patients attending the special clinics and general hospital, illegally private clinics and persons visiting such clinics for the treatment of STD and suspected STD, drug stores and clients purchasing the drug for the treatment of STD. The methods used to collect data were personal interview, in — depth interview, non — participant observation, et al. Since the health care seeking behavior with STD patients involves the sensitive topics about sexual behavior, multiple sexual partners and social norms about sex, key informants, drug stores and persons visiting illegally private clinics were hard to approach, the data collection in qualitative phase was much more difficult than in quantitative in this study.The quantitative study showed that of 445 STD patients through personal interview in Beijing, 48.1% of them selected special STD...
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