Health literacy of Dutch adults: a cross sectional survey

Iris Van Der Heide,Kristine Sørensen,Mariël Droomers,Ellen Uiters,Maarten Schipper,Jany Rademakers

doi:10.1186/1471-2458-13-179

Abstract

BackgroundRelatively little knowledge is available to date about health literacy among the general population in Europe. It is important to gain insights into health literacy competences among the general population, as this might contribute to more effective health promotion and help clarify socio-economic disparities in health. This paper is part of the European Health Literacy Survey (HLS-EU). It aims to add to the body of theoretical knowledge about health literacy by measuring perceived difficulties with health information in various domains of health, looking at a number of competences. The definition and measure of health literacy is still topic of debate and hardly any instruments are available that are applicable for the general population. The objectives were to obtain an initial measure of health literacy in a sample of the general population in the Netherlands and to relate this measure to education, income, perceived social status, age, and sex.MethodsThe HLS-EU questionnaire was administered face-to-face in a sample of 925 Dutch adults, during July 2011. Perceived difficulties with the health literacy competences for accessing, understanding, appraising and applying information were measured within the domains of healthcare, disease prevention and health promotion. Multiple linear regression analyses were applied to explore the associations between health literacy competences and education, income, perceived social status, age, and sex.ResultsPerceived difficulties with health information and their association with demographic and socio-economic variables vary according to the competence and health domain addressed. Having a low level of education or a low perceived social status or being male were consistently found to be significantly related to relatively low health literacy scores, mainly for accessing and understanding health information.ConclusionsPerceived difficulties with health information vary between competences and domains of health. Health literacy competences are associated with indicators of socio-economic position and with the domain in which health information is provided.

Highlights

Little knowledge is available to date about health literacy among the general population in Europe
As to the extent to which health literacy competences are associated with demographic and socio-economic characteristics, the results indicate that lower health literacy is associated with lower socio-economic position, in accordance with the literature [4,5,6,21,22,23]
The results of our study suggest that health information, whether it is about healthcare, disease prevention or health promotion, will most likely not have the same effect across the various socio-economic strata in the Dutch population

Summary

Introduction

Little knowledge is available to date about health literacy among the general population in Europe. The definition and measure of health literacy is still topic of debate and hardly any instruments are available that are applicable for the general population. An important issue regarding health literacy research is the ongoing debate on the definition and scope of health literacy [1,7,8]. Within this discourse, two main approaches can be distinguished, namely the ‘clinical’ approach and the ‘public health’ approach [7,9]. In the European situation, little is known about health literacy outside a clinical setting and among the general population

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Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion