Objective To understand the characteristics associated with health care seeking behaviors for children in floating populations. Methods A stratified multi-stage sampling strategy with PPS method was employed to select 1 943 children aging 0-7 yr. in the floating populations in Sichuan province, which included 605 flowing out, 468 left-at-home, 822 migrated inhabitants, and 48 returned. Latent class analysis (LCA) was performed to establish potential feature classifications for their use of child health care service (physical examination card, free medical examination, vaccination certificate and immunization）. Results Overall, 84.30%, 68.90%, 97.70%， and 94.30% of the floating populations used physical examination card, free medical examination, vaccination certificate, and immunization services for their children, respectively. Differences in physical examination card and free medical examination services were found between those flowing out and those left-at-home and between those left-at-home and those migrated inhabitants ( P<0.008). Children left-at-home were shortage of use of free medical examinations (18.38%, 186 people). Children flowing out were lack of both medical examination and physical examination card services (12.73%, 77 people). There were 222 children (27.01%) from the migrated inhabitants who did not take medical examinations. Conclusion Efforts should be made to encourage medical examinations for children in the floating populations. Household registration may influence the potential feature classifications of child health care utilization.
