Author
Listed:
- Zhanna Sargsyan
- Zaruhi Grigoryan
- Serine Sahakyan
- Anya Agopian
- Tsovinar Harutyunyan
Abstract
Introduction: The success of health education programs heavily depends on the individuals’ ability to comprehend information and apply it when making decisions regarding health. Low health literacy can lead to poor health in the context of both chronic and infectious diseases, as it influences a range of health-related behaviors. Little is known about infectious disease-related health literacy in Armenia and countries of similar socio-economic profiles. We aimed to quantify the levels of infectious disease-related health literacy and knowledge among the Armenian population and explore the underlying socio-economic factors. Materials and methods: We conducted a nationwide phone survey among 3483 adults selected via stratified two-stage probability proportional to size sampling in 2021. Descriptive statistics, simple and multivariable regression were used for the analysis. Results: The average age of respondents was 49.5 years. The majority were female (71.0%) and had at least 12 years of schooling (70.5%). The mean literacy score was 5.64 out of 7 (SD:1.06). The mean infectious disease knowledge score was 2.48 out of 4 (SD:1.19). Younger age, female gender, higher level of education, city residence, being employed, and having higher monthly expenditures were associated with higher mean scores of infectious disease-related health literacy and knowledge. In multivariable linear regression analysis, all the socio-demographic characteristics remained significant for both dependent variables. Conclusions: The study results revealed population groups with a higher infectious disease-related health literacy and knowledge. Interventions should focus on groups lagging behind to engage them in proper prevention practices to protect themselves and improve health status of Armenian population.
Suggested Citation
Zhanna Sargsyan & Zaruhi Grigoryan & Serine Sahakyan & Anya Agopian & Tsovinar Harutyunyan, 2024.
"Socio-demographic determinants of infectious disease-related health literacy and knowledge in Armenia: Results from a nationwide survey,"
PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 19(7), pages 1-11, July.
Handle:
RePEc:plo:pone00:0307300
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0307300
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0307300. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.