Kontakt 2019, 21(2):197-205 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2019.011

Maternal health literacy of ethnic Hungarian mothers in RomaniaSocial Sciences in Health - Original article

Agnes-Rozsa Santha *
Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Faculty of Technical and Human Sciences, Department of Applied Social Sciences, Târgu Mureș, Romania

This study assesses health literacy of mothers with regard to the health of their children aged 10 or under. It measures the basic factual knowledge component of health literacy. The sample size is 482 ethnic Hungarian mothers living in cities and villages in Transylvania, Romania. The research tool is a standardized online questionnaire. Respondents were asked to answer quiz-like questions, so health literacy scores were assigned to each respondent in all domains as well as a general score. Descriptive results reveal the health literacy in selected domains and population groups, and linear regression identifies the explanatory variables for health literacy disparities. Altogether, the factual knowledge of mothers is in most cases at least acceptable. Linear regression reveals the impact of educational attainment and age when adjusted to covariates. The differences in health literacy associated with social inequalities are revealed with respect to five domains out of six assessed with the online survey. The age of mothers shows positive correlation with their knowledge on child health. The results indicate the necessity of improving maternal health literacy, especially among low educated mothers.

Keywords: Educational attainment; Health literacy; Maternal age; Nutrition literacy; Social inequalities; Vaccine literacy

Received: July 28, 2018; Accepted: January 22, 2019; Prepublished online: March 5, 2019; Published: June 17, 2019  Show citation

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Santha A. Maternal health literacy of ethnic Hungarian mothers in Romania. Kontakt. 2019;21(2):197-205. doi: 10.32725/kont.2019.011.
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