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Exploring Associated Factors of Subjective Health Literacy in School-Aged Children

Low health literacy is considered to lead to worse health-related outcomes and behaviors and has therefore been recognized as a social determinant of health. While health literacy and its potential determinants have been studied in adults, little research has been conducted with children. This study...

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Autores principales: Fretian, Alexandra, Bollweg, Torsten Michael, Okan, Orkan, Pinheiro, Paulo, Bauer, Ullrich
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7084889/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32155711
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17051720
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author Fretian, Alexandra
Bollweg, Torsten Michael
Okan, Orkan
Pinheiro, Paulo
Bauer, Ullrich
author_facet Fretian, Alexandra
Bollweg, Torsten Michael
Okan, Orkan
Pinheiro, Paulo
Bauer, Ullrich
author_sort Fretian, Alexandra
collection PubMed
description Low health literacy is considered to lead to worse health-related outcomes and behaviors and has therefore been recognized as a social determinant of health. While health literacy and its potential determinants have been studied in adults, little research has been conducted with children. This study aims to address this research gap by investigating factors associated with children’s subjective health literacy. Cross-sectional data was collected from fourth graders at German schools with a self-report questionnaire. Sociodemographic characteristics, health-related attitudes, and motivation were analyzed. We used hierarchical multivariate linear regression to explain variance in the dependent variable “subjective health literacy”. A total of n = 907 fourth graders were surveyed. Regarding health literacy, eight out of ten participants (82.2%) reported that it was “rather easy” or “very easy” to deal with health-related information. Family affluence, but not language spoken at home, was significantly related to subjective health literacy, after controlling for confounding. Moreover, parental health orientation, self-efficacy, and motivation are factors significantly associated with health literacy. Based on the results of this study, it is hypothesized that a general motivation to learn new things about health, as well as an environment promoting health-positive behavior, might foster children’s health literacy.
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spelling pubmed-70848892020-03-23 Exploring Associated Factors of Subjective Health Literacy in School-Aged Children Fretian, Alexandra Bollweg, Torsten Michael Okan, Orkan Pinheiro, Paulo Bauer, Ullrich Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Low health literacy is considered to lead to worse health-related outcomes and behaviors and has therefore been recognized as a social determinant of health. While health literacy and its potential determinants have been studied in adults, little research has been conducted with children. This study aims to address this research gap by investigating factors associated with children’s subjective health literacy. Cross-sectional data was collected from fourth graders at German schools with a self-report questionnaire. Sociodemographic characteristics, health-related attitudes, and motivation were analyzed. We used hierarchical multivariate linear regression to explain variance in the dependent variable “subjective health literacy”. A total of n = 907 fourth graders were surveyed. Regarding health literacy, eight out of ten participants (82.2%) reported that it was “rather easy” or “very easy” to deal with health-related information. Family affluence, but not language spoken at home, was significantly related to subjective health literacy, after controlling for confounding. Moreover, parental health orientation, self-efficacy, and motivation are factors significantly associated with health literacy. Based on the results of this study, it is hypothesized that a general motivation to learn new things about health, as well as an environment promoting health-positive behavior, might foster children’s health literacy. MDPI 2020-03-06 2020-03 /pmc/articles/PMC7084889/ /pubmed/32155711 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17051720 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Fretian, Alexandra
Bollweg, Torsten Michael
Okan, Orkan
Pinheiro, Paulo
Bauer, Ullrich
Exploring Associated Factors of Subjective Health Literacy in School-Aged Children
title Exploring Associated Factors of Subjective Health Literacy in School-Aged Children
title_full Exploring Associated Factors of Subjective Health Literacy in School-Aged Children
title_fullStr Exploring Associated Factors of Subjective Health Literacy in School-Aged Children
title_full_unstemmed Exploring Associated Factors of Subjective Health Literacy in School-Aged Children
title_short Exploring Associated Factors of Subjective Health Literacy in School-Aged Children
title_sort exploring associated factors of subjective health literacy in school-aged children
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7084889/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32155711
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17051720
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