Health literacy survey among university students

Abstract

Introduction: The concept of health literacy and the related studies have become the focus of scientific interest recently due to the recognition of the relationship between health status and health literacy. Despite its significance, only few studies have been carried out in this area in our country, and according to our knowledge our study was the first one conducted among university students
Methodology: A cross-sectional study was carried out among public health inspector students at the Faculty of Public Health University of Debrecen with a self-administered paper-based questionnaire that included items on demographic and socioeconomic data, subjective well-being, health consciousness, and two scales in order to measure self-perceived (European Health Literacy Survey, HLS-EU) and functional (Newest Vital Sign, NVS) health literacy. The chi-square and Fisher-exact test were used in order to analyse the differences between the study years, while the determinants of health literacy were investigated with binary logistic regression.
Results: The answers of 118 students were suitable for data analysis. Based on theresults of the HLS-EU scale 6% of respondents had inadequate, 42% problematic, 44% sufficient and 8% excellent health literacy. The NVS test showed that 1% of respondents had inadequate, 13% limited and 86% adequate health literacy. The level of health literacy was higher among 4th year students compared to freshmen irrespective of the used scale; however there was not any relationship either withsocioeconomic status or with health status.
Conclusions: The possibility to compare our results with other studies is limited due to the pioneering approach. Compared to the results of a previous Hungarian study, where the same scales were used to measure health literacy among people above the age of 16 years, it can be stated that the level of functional health literacy was higher among students and the proportion of those who have inadequate health literacy was lower measured by the HLS-EU test.