Health Literacy of Caregivers and Teachers about Pre School-Aged Care in Ubon Ratchathani Province

Abstract

This descriptive study aimed to determine the relationship between personal factors of primary caregivers and teachers, nutritional status, development and health literacy. The sample consisted of 384 primary caregivers and teachers of preschool in a child development center by using multi-stage sampling method. Instruments included personal characteristics questionnaire and health literacy questionnaire with Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .76. Data were analyzed using percentage, mean,standard deviation and Pearson’s correlation coefficient.
The results showed that the age, education level, occupation and income of the main caregivers were significantly and positively correlated with health literacy (r = .244, p = .000, r = .128, p = .016, r = .129, p = .016, r = .108, p = .043, respectively) and gender was not associated with health literacy (r =.-.018, p = .740). Personal factors of teachers found that position was significantly associated with health literacy (r = .513, p= .004) and age, educational background and work experience were not significantly correlated with health literacy (r = .183, p = .333, r = -.196, p = .298, r = .149, p = . .432 respectively) and health literacy in auditing and decision-making, and interpersonal communication were significantly correlated with nutritional and developmental (r = .169, p = .001, r = .126, p = .018, respectively).
The findings from this study indicate that nurses can apply health literacy interm of auditing, dicision-making, and communication to develop the process of nutrition education program for primary caregivers and teachers.