TY - JOUR
T1 - Effects of Objective and Subjective Health Literacy on Patients’ Accurate Judgment of Health Information and Decision-Making Ability: Survey Study
AU - Schulz, Peter Johannes
AU - Schulz, Peter
AU - Pessina, Annalisa
AU - Hartung, Uwe
AU - Petrocchi, Serena
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Background:
Interpreting health information and acquiring health knowledge have become more important with the accumulation of scientific medical knowledge and ideals of patient autonomy. Health literacy and its tremendous success as a concept can be considered an admission that not all is well in the distribution of health knowledge. The internet makes health information much more easily accessible than ever, but it introduces its own problems, of which health disinformation is a major one.
Objective:
The objective of this study was to determine whether objective and subjective health literacy are independent concepts and to test which of the two was associated more strongly with accurate judgments of the quality of a medical website and with behavioral intentions beneficial to health.
Methods:
A survey on depression and its treatments was conducted online (n=362). The Newest Vital Sign was employed to measure objective, performance-based health literacy, and the eHealth Literacy Scale was used to measure subjective, perception-based health literacy. Correlations, comparisons of means, linear and binary logistic regression, and mediation models were used to determine the associations.
Results:
Objective and subjective health literacy were weakly associated with one another (r=0.06, P=.24). High objective health literacy levels were associated with an inclination to behave in ways that are beneficial to one’s own or others’ health (Exp[B]=2.068, P=.004) and an ability to recognize low-quality online sources of health information (β=–.4698, P=.005). The recognition also improved participants’ choice of treatment (β=–.3345, P<.001). Objective health literacy helped people to recognize misinformation on health websites and improved their judgment on their treatment for depression.
Conclusions:
Self-reported, perception-based health literacy should be treated as a separate concept from objective, performance-based health literacy. Only objective health literacy appears to have the potential to prevent people from becoming victims of health disinformation.
AB - Background:
Interpreting health information and acquiring health knowledge have become more important with the accumulation of scientific medical knowledge and ideals of patient autonomy. Health literacy and its tremendous success as a concept can be considered an admission that not all is well in the distribution of health knowledge. The internet makes health information much more easily accessible than ever, but it introduces its own problems, of which health disinformation is a major one.
Objective:
The objective of this study was to determine whether objective and subjective health literacy are independent concepts and to test which of the two was associated more strongly with accurate judgments of the quality of a medical website and with behavioral intentions beneficial to health.
Methods:
A survey on depression and its treatments was conducted online (n=362). The Newest Vital Sign was employed to measure objective, performance-based health literacy, and the eHealth Literacy Scale was used to measure subjective, perception-based health literacy. Correlations, comparisons of means, linear and binary logistic regression, and mediation models were used to determine the associations.
Results:
Objective and subjective health literacy were weakly associated with one another (r=0.06, P=.24). High objective health literacy levels were associated with an inclination to behave in ways that are beneficial to one’s own or others’ health (Exp[B]=2.068, P=.004) and an ability to recognize low-quality online sources of health information (β=–.4698, P=.005). The recognition also improved participants’ choice of treatment (β=–.3345, P<.001). Objective health literacy helped people to recognize misinformation on health websites and improved their judgment on their treatment for depression.
Conclusions:
Self-reported, perception-based health literacy should be treated as a separate concept from objective, performance-based health literacy. Only objective health literacy appears to have the potential to prevent people from becoming victims of health disinformation.
KW - Newest Vital Sign
KW - depression
KW - eHealth Literacy Scale
KW - health literacy
KW - mental health
KW - objective health literacy
KW - perception-based health literacy
KW - performance-based
KW - self-reported health literacy
KW - Newest Vital Sign
KW - depression
KW - eHealth Literacy Scale
KW - health literacy
KW - mental health
KW - objective health literacy
KW - perception-based health literacy
KW - performance-based
KW - self-reported health literacy
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10807/272114
U2 - 10.2196/20457
DO - 10.2196/20457
M3 - Article
SN - 1438-8871
VL - 23
SP - N/A-N/A
JO - JMIR. JOURNAL OF MEDICAL INTERNET RESEARCH
JF - JMIR. JOURNAL OF MEDICAL INTERNET RESEARCH
ER -