Health educators are expected to serve as resource of health knowledge and being e-health literate enable health educators to perform that function. However, the e-health literacy level of health education undergraduate students is rarely explored. A systematic literature review was conducted in order to investigate the e-health literacy levels of undergraduate students. The Research Readiness Self-Assessment-health (RRSA-h) was used to measure the ability of health education majors to find and evaluate electronic health information and a Q-study was conducted to investigate student characteristics that distinguish between those with high, middle, and low levels of e-health literacy.
A convenience sample of 77 health education majors completed the RRSA-h. A MANOVA revealed that e-health literacy levels differed among classification level [F(4,140) = 2.597, p = .039]. Thirteen health education majors participated in the Q-study. An exploratory factor analysis revealed three types of e-health literate students exist among the majors.
The literature revealed that college students have limited ability to find and evaluate electronic health information. The RRSA-h indicated that lower-level college students have less ability to find and evaluate e-health information than upper level students. The Q-study suggested that three types of health education majors exist and could be differentiated by their scores on the RRSA-h.
The results of the study have implications for the development of instructional techniques to improve the e-health levels of health education majors. Specifically, the RRSA-h can be used to measure e-health literacy levels among health education majors and learning opportunities can be tailored to improve their e-health literacy levels.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2011-05-9366 |
| Date | 2011 May 1900 |
| Creators | Hanik, Bruce Walter |
| Contributors | Eddy, James, Pruitt, Buster |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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