The available literature on decision-making for conventional medicine and complementary medicine has generally focused on different aspects of decision-making, making it difficult to determine whether the same or different processes occur across the two treatment modalities. Research on decision-making is active or passive .Examples of some such finding include : significant age trends associated with decision-making, with younger patients preferring to be more involved in the decision-making process, whilst older patients preferring the more non-participatory role ; influence of disease stage on patient decision-making, with most patients preferring their physician and family to share responsibility if too ill to make decisions ; and patients tent to become less involved in the decision-making process if their condition worsens.