Health Literacy and Preventive Behaviors on COVID-19 among Undergraduate Students in a University of Southern Thailand
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14456/dcj.2022.42Keywords:
health literacy, prevention behaviors, coronavirus disease 2019Abstract
This cross-sectional study aimed to assess the level of health literacy (HL) and preventive behaviors on COVID-19 and to analyze the association between HL and preventive behaviors on COVID-19. This research utilized a research design with 440 university students as participants. Data were gathered using online survey questionnaire (Content Validity Index = 0.86), identified two parts HL questionnaire (Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient = 0.97), and preventive behaviors on COVID-19 questionnaire (Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient = 0.93). The statistics used for analysis included descriptive statistics and Chi-square test. The results showed that about 73.9% were females, aged 18-24 years old, and mean Grade Point Average (GPA) was 3.13. Of the levels assessed, 84.6% demonstrated adequate health literacy and 63.9% had a high performance of prevention behaviors on COVID-19. We found evidence of a statistically significant association between HL and COVID-19 prevention behaviors (p<0.05). Furthermore, access, communication, self-management, and media literacy skills were components significantly associated with good practice of COVID-19 prevention behaviors (p<0.05). Therefore, it indicates the maintenance of health literacy by administrators or educational institutions can help promote health literacy and prevention behaviors with effective interventions or strategies for increasing awareness and level of future health literacy and prevention behaviors on new emerging diseases.
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