The purpose of this study is to describe the acknowledgement of the cause of the illness in the patients with RA. I used naturalistic inquiry as a research methodology. The purposive sampling was conducted. 23 subjects who experienced RA, lived in middle-sized city in Korea, and 19 women and 4 men. I collected data using indepth structured interview, "What is the acknowledgement of the cause of the illness?" I used inductive data analysis-such as unitizing and categorizing. This process is used constant comparative method. Summerising the results of this study, the acknowledgement of the cause of the illness are composed of physical constitution, fatalism, the attribution of physical overload, the attribution of stress, the lack of nutrition. The factors which affect the acknowledgement of the cause of the illness are composed of internal factors, external factors, environmental factors. The internal factors are the weakness of the childhood, the illness experience in the family members, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, personality, lack of nutrition. The external factors are pregnancy, delivery, role burden and conflict, economic problem. The environmental factors are humid condition, abrupt environmental change. It is needed to explaine the coping pattern according to the acknowledgement of the cause of the illness in the next research.