Health literacy among adults: a study from Turkey

Abstract

Patients' health literacy is increasingly recognized as a critical factor affecting health communication and outcomes. We performed this study to assess the levels of health literacy by using Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM) and Newest Vital Sign (NVS) instruments. Patients (n = 456) at a family medicine clinic completed in-person interviews, REALM and NVS tests which were translated into the Turkish language by translation-back translation process. Additional questions regarding demographic characteristics were also collected. The mean scores (mean + or - standard error) for REALM and NVS were 60.29 + or - 0.32 and 2.60 + or - 0.08, respectively. The REALM test scores showed that 2.7% had inadequate (less than or equal to 6th grade), 38.6% marginal (7th to 8th grade) and 58.7% (greater than or equal to 9th grade) adequate health literacy. The NVS test score revealed a proportion of 28.1% had adequate health literacy. Educational attainment was the most important demographic characteristic found to be related to the health literacy. Reading and vocabulary skills were better than numerical capabilities. Female, primary school educated and poor economic condition participants and those who were older had the lowest scores in both the tests.

Letramento funcional em saúde na adolescência: associação com determinantes sociais e percepção de contextos de violência

“…The data analysis revealed that most of the individuals presented good functional health literacy, corroborating other studies with samples from different age groups and using other previously validated evaluation instruments, such as the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM) (11) and the Test of Functional Health Literacy -TOFHLA (12,13) , which have shown adequate functional health literacy scores for most individuals. A study that used the Newest Vital Sign -NVS (11) as an instrument of evaluation verified adequate functional health literacy in about one third of the sample evaluated.…”

“…A study that used the Newest Vital Sign -NVS (11) as an instrument of evaluation verified adequate functional health literacy in about one third of the sample evaluated. It is worth mentioning that the majority of individuals in such samples were female, a percentage that is similar to the present study.…”

“…A study that used two tests to measure functional health literacy, the REALM and the NVS, indicated several results, a finding that was justified by the different skills tested (11) . Thereby, the test used to measure functional health literacy seems to influence the outcome, since they evaluate different abilities, such as reading comprehension and numeracy skills, so that the same individual can perform well in one test and have bad results at another.…”

The Determinants of Self–Rated Oral Health in Istanbul Adults

“…This finding was inconsistent with previous studies suggesting that less educated adults were more likely to rate their oral health as fair ⁄ poor (Atchison & Gift, 1997;Finlayson et al, 2010;Gift et al, 1998;Matthias et al, 1995). This discrepancy can be explained by the fact that Turkish adults with lower education level have lower levels of health literacy (Ozdemir et al, 2010). Recent studies suggest that health literacy is associated with educational attainment in self-rated health and in regular dental attendance pattern among older adults (Bennett et al, 2009).…”

Health Literacy of Students Who Applied to Medical and Nursing Faculty in Dokuz Eylul University

“…Ancak, bu çalışmada yer alan gençlerin NVS puanları, Özdemir ve arkadaşlarının çalışmasında ulaşılanların yaklaşık 2 katı kadardır. 11 Bu durum, katılımcıların farklı yaş gruplarında olmaları kadar bizim çalışmadaki gençlerin hepsinin hem lise mezunu, hem de üniversite sınavında tıp ve hemşirelik fakültelerini kazanacak kadar başarılı olmaları önemli bir etkendir. Bu gençlerin girdikleri sınavlar nedeniyle, matematiksel işlemlere daha yatkın ve seçtikleri alan itibariyle de sağlık alanına ve bu alanda kullanılan terimlere yakın ve ilgili olmalarına bağlanabilir.…”