Health Literacy and Self-care of Viewers: (An Analysis of Contemporary Scientific Insights Shared on the Instagram Page of the Day System Research Centre - A Case Study)

Abstract

In today’s digital world, social media especially Instagram play a significant role in publishing diverse kinds of information and the viewers of social media are subject to understanding or appraising the accuracy or truth of the information based on their health literacy level. Studying the two domains of health literacy on the information published on Instagram is important due to the probable effect they may have on the health of the viewers. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the relationship between the health literacy of viewers of Day System Research Centre’s stories on Instagram; the page was publishing health-related scientific insights; thus, the study was to assess the probable association of the health literacy of the viewers and their self-care practices. Two scopes of health literacy, understanding health information and appraisal of health information, were chosen as independent variables. This study focused on the viewers for three months, retrospectively. Due to the low number of total viewers, thus the convenience sampling method was selected to distribute the questionnaires. In this study, the questionnaires included six general and 16 specialized statements. For the validity of the questionnaire, the questionnaire was available via E-Lomake to five professors and researchers, and in a one-week deadline to receive their comments, three feedbacks were delivered; then, the initial statements were revised to have the final valid questionnaire. During the reliability test, the first 40 respondents were considered. As a result of the reliability test, for all scopes of the study, Cronbach's alpha was greater than 0.7, and the reliability was confirmed; thus, all the statements were kept for the study analysis. For the study’s descriptive and inferential tests, the entire population of respondents, which included those initial 40 respondents, was also included. After the data analysis, the Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated using SPSS software to determine the relationship between variables. Findings showed a correlation coefficient (r) of 0.797 between self-care and understanding health information, which was statistically significant at the 99% confidence level (Sig = 0.01). There was also a correlation coefficient (r) of 0.749 between self-care and appraisal of health information, which was statistically significant at the 99% confidence level (Sig = 0.01). This indicated a positive and significant relationship between any of these two variables with 99% confidence. To conclude, the adjusted coefficient of determination was 66.3%; meaning that 66.3% of the variance in self-care scope was explained by these scopes.

Keywords: Health Literacy, Understanding Health Information, Appraisal of Health Information, Self-care