The Empirical Research Of “Knowledge Gap” And “Digital Gap” On Urban And Rural Health Communication

Studying the effect of economy status, the degree of education and media contact to the urban and rural health knowledge communication is the main purpose. Making correlation analysis to the degree of the influence at the three variable factors. This paper involves three core assumptions, and verifies the correlation among economic status, education degree and medium construction through the "knowledge gap", the "digital gap" and "ceiling effect theory". "Knowledge gap" in this article refers to the speed gap of gaining health knowledge because of the difference of basic economy level, educational level and the degree of media channel construction and media contact between the urban and rural population. Higher level of economic status, education degree and medium construction will gain more information. "Digital gap" refers to the gap of the amount of health knowledge because of the difference between gaining the information sources and channels of health knowledge in the urban and rural population. Higher level of economic status, education degree and medium construction will gain information more quickly. "Ceiling Effect Theory " refers to the problem of "Knowledge gap" and "Digital gap" caused by the gap of economic status, education degree and medium construction.Questionnaire survey, statistical analysis and content analysis are the main research methods. The overall main area of this survey questionnaire is Guanghan, Sichuan Province residents, the main target areas are core towns, the economy of urban and rural area and remote village. Questionnaires are mostly used to collect the population statistics, economy status, the degree of education and media contact among each target areas.The result of descriptive analysis of the survey expresses that core towns, the economy of urban and rural areas and remote villages are generally having economy status gap. The further the target areas, the bigger the gap is. The gap of the degree of education is extremely obvious, and the degree of education at core town is much higher than that at remote village. Media contact is similar to the result of education, the degree of media contact is still higher than that at remote village. the results of correlation analysis of the survey: the degree of education gap is extremely high correlated with the gain of health knowledge. The media contact and media infrastructure development gap is highly correlated with the gain of health knowledge. The economy status gap is medium correlated with the gain of health knowledge.All the interviewees have the same emphasis of daily lifestyle choices and their own health and health knowledge recognition. Therefore the gap of economic status has limited effect to the gaining of health knowledge. The most important factors are the degree of education and media construction. According to the results of descriptive analysis, the learning and distribution of health knowledge by the interviewees is determined by the subjective consciousness and initiatives. But the subjective consciousness and initiatives is driven by the degree of education. So, the degree of education is the primary factor which influence the gaining of health knowledge. The degree of education of interviewees within the three targeted areas will affect the contact and usage of media and media channels. Although the media facilities construction is dominated by the economy, the degree of education is the key point of contacting and using media. The contact of media and channels will eventually affect the interviewees gaining the health knowledge.The degree of education is the primary factor in affecting the urban and rural health knowledge communication. Although, the interviewees have high subjective consciousness in health. But the final effect of gain and communication is depending on the degree of education among interviewees. Media technology and channel contact is the second important factor of health communication. The effect of generally media development of health communication is exceeding our expectation. Economy status has the lowest effect to the health knowledge communication. When the fundamental economy status has arrived at a certain average level, the gap of economy status will have few effect on the health communication. Urban and rural health is the most important part of our people’s life, its communication, learning, research and popularity is significant to our life. It also concerns about the health and safety of the whole country. Along with the increasing influence of media in our life, it will be more meaningful to research the urban and rural health knowledge with the use of statistical methods from the view point of the gap of economic status, education level and media construction.In the questionnaire of this study, researchers have noticed that the most important factor in urban and rural health knowledge communication is the degree of education. It shows us the significant positive correlation of the degree of people access to the health knowledge and information. However, education tends to be easily ignored by us. Therefore, strengthen our degree of learning and education development will directly affect our study, research and dissemination of health. Secondly, the effect of economic status to urban and rural health knowledge dissemination is not that important as we imagined. According to the results of this correlation analysis, the correlation coefficient of the economic status is the lowest, and even far below the correlation coefficient of education level and media construction and contact. Thirdly, this study confirmed the positive role of media technology development and media contact to the urban and rural health knowledge dissemination. Meanwhile, it is also the author for the first time using the statistical method and the approach of communication analysis to study the urban and rural health knowledge dissemination. Once again, we emphasized that the effect of economy on the health is no longer as in the past. Along with our national economic development achieving a more reasonable status, the impact of education and media on health knowledge will be our future research direction. Especially, the rise of mass media will bring a new research field to our communication scholars.