Investigation of the relationship of general and digital health literacy with various health-related outcomes

Abstract

Background: Despite the growing number of health literacy surveys, we know little about the combined effect of the different dimensions of health literacy on various health-related outcomes.

Objective: Thus, our study aimed to examine the impacts of general and digital health literacy on health behaviour, confidence in vaccination, self-perceived health, and health care utilization.

Methods: Our research was part of the Health Literacy Population Survey 2019-2021, which was an international, multicentre, cross-sectional study. The data were collected via computer-assisted telephone interview in December 2020 in Hungary. Multiple multinomial logistic and multivariate linear regression models were used to analyse the separately effects of general and digital health literacy on the studied outcomes. Moreover, the combined effect of general and digital health literacy was also analysed via sensitivity analyses. In the last step, the interactions between general and digital health literacy were examined using the Johnson-Neyman procedure.

Results: The results did not reveal any associations between health literacy and health behaviour. Health care use was only affected by digital health literacy; however, this effect was inconsistent. Both dimensions of health literacy were positively associated with self-perceived health and vaccination confidence.

Conclusion: Our results suggest that increasing health literacy could promote health and vaccination confidence, while the potential effect of higher digital health literacy on more conscious use of the health care system should be investigated further.

Keywords: confidence in vaccination; digital health literacy; general health literacy; health behaviour; health care utilization; health literacy population survey 2019-2021; self-perceived health.