Digital Health Literacy and Its Associated Factors in General Population in Indonesia

Abstract

Digital health literacy is expected to help individuals deal with information necessary during the pandemic. The study aimed to assess digital health literacy and identify its associated factors among the general population in Indonesia. A cross-sectional online survey was used to elicit the responses of the general population (aged ≥18 years) in Indonesia from 31 March to 7 April 2022. Along with sociodemographic characteristics, the measures included 8-subscales scores on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) from the eHealth Literacy Scale (eHEALS) tools to asses Digital Health Literacy (DHL) scores. Linear regression was performed to assess the association of sociodemographic characteristics with DHL. The significance level was set at 0.05. A total of 460 respondents participated in the study. The findings show that most respondents know how to find helpful health resources on the Internet (4.13±0.56), how to use the Internet to answer health questions (3.75±0.87), what kinds of health resources are available on the Internet (3.78±0.86), and how to use the health information on the Internet to help themselves (3.67±0.78). Digital literacy is significantly associated with age (p= 0.032), education level (p=<0.001), occupation (p=<0.001), family income (p=<0.001), experience of having chronic disease (p= 0.016), use of prescribed medicine (p= 0.021) and intensity of internet use (p=<0.001). The finding indicates that DHL in the general population in Indonesia is still limited in technical ability. Improving respondents’ educational status through computer training and smartphone access, and perceived usefulness was necessary to improve digital health literacy skills in evaluating the quality of the information so that respondents feel confident in using information from the Internet to make health decisions.