The Relationship between Health Literacy, Prevention Behaviors, and COVID-19 Infection among Industrial Workers in Chachoengsao Province, Thailand
Keywords:
Health Literacy, Prevention Behaviors, COVID-19 Infection, Industrial WorkersAbstract
This study was a cross-sectional correlational study to examine the relationship between health literacy, prevention behaviors, and COVID-19 infection among industrial workers in Chachoengsao province, Thailand. Between January and February 2022, purposive sampling was carried out to recruit 92 industrial workers as inclusion and exclusion criteria from Chachoengsao province, Thailand. Data collection was based on an HL questionnaire. The HL is comprised of six domains. There is an assessment of information and services, knowledge and understanding of health, communication with professionals, making appropriate health decisions on good practices, managing health information, and getting media and information literacy. The prevention behavior questionnaire was based on COVID-19 infections. The measurement reliability was reported as Cronbach alpha = 0.895 to 0.919, respectively. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, including frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and range. Moreover, to analyze the relationships between study variables using the correlational coefficient and Chi-square statistic, the p-value of .05 was considered statistically significant. Results showed that industrial workers had a high level of health literacy and COVID-19 prevention behavior. Health literacy was significantly positively correlated with prevention behavior (rs = 0.508, p = 0.000). In addition, there was no significant positive correlation between COVID-19 infection and health literacy (χ2 = 3.420, p = 0.230), but it was significantly related to prevention behaviors (χ2 = 92.000, p = 0.000). The results of the study demonstrated that promoting health literacy is an important strategy for improving prevention behaviors among industrial workers. The roles of occupational nurses are critical to promoting and providing appropriate responses and could effectively control the spread of COVID-19.
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