Health Literacy and Health Information Seeking Behaviors of Student at the University of Central Florida

Health literacy is the skill needed to acquire, read, understand, and use health related information to make informed healthcare decisions. It is also the skill needed to follow and maintain a treatment plan. Having a high or adequate health literacy level is important because possessing poor health literacy skill can have a negative impact on one\u27s overall health. This research is important because there are few studies available on the health literacy levels of undergraduate college students. The majority of health literacy studies focus on at risk or underserved populations with low education. Previous studies have shown that education is not a strong indicator of good health literacy skill. The aim of this study is to evaluate the health literacy rate of students at the University of Central Florida (UCF), and to analyze the health information seeking behavior. Students were given the Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults (TOFHLA) to assess the levels of health literacy among undergraduate students. The Health Seeking Information Behaviors (HSIB) survey was also given to analyze common information seeking behaviors among college students. Additional questions were included to collect demographic information to compare differences in health literacy levels among different subgroups of students. The survey questionnaires were built into Qualtrics, an online survey system, and shared with undergraduate students at UCF for participation. Survey results were downloaded into SPSS software version 25. Data analysis included one-way ANOVA to assess possible associations between student demographics and level of health literacy skill and health information seeking behavior among participants. Survey results showed that students at UCF had very high health literacy skills among all demographics. The study results suggest the need for development of a survey tool measuring health literacy skills of an educated population be designed and validated to assess the health literacy skills of an educated population