Knowledge about where to find help: a preliminary analysis.

Medical sociology has neglected the theoretical and practical importance of community member's knowledge about where to find help for their problems. This is a report of a preliminary analysis of data from an Australian study of knowledge about helping facilities. Replies of survey respondents to questions probing their level of information about where to find help for psychiatric, marital and financial problems were analysed. This revealed a surprisingly high and quite specific level of information. A “knowledge of resources” index was constructed and further cross-tabulation revealed a relationship between knowledge and a number of social variables. Specifically, socio-economic status was related to knowledge: higher status persons were more likely to be high scorers on the knowledge index than low social status respondents.