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

Alexandra Fretian, Torsten Michael Bollweg, Orkan Okan, Paulo Pinheiro and Ullrich Bauer
Additional contact information
Alexandra Fretian: School of Public Health, Bielefeld University, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany
Torsten Michael Bollweg: Centre for Prevention and Intervention in Childhood and Adolescence (CPI), Faculty of Educational Science, Bielefeld University, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany
Orkan Okan: Centre for Prevention and Intervention in Childhood and Adolescence (CPI), Faculty of Educational Science, Bielefeld University, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany
Paulo Pinheiro: Centre for Prevention and Intervention in Childhood and Adolescence (CPI), Faculty of Educational Science, Bielefeld University, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany
Ullrich Bauer: Centre for Prevention and Intervention in Childhood and Adolescence (CPI), Faculty of Educational Science, Bielefeld University, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 5, 1-13

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: subjective health literacy; children; social gradient; motivation; HLS-EU-Q (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/5/1720/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/5/1720/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:5:p:1720-:d:329101

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().