Effectiveness of health literacy education on health literacy in early adolescence: A randomized controlled trial

Abstract

Objectives

The present study was conducted to measure the effectiveness of health literacy education on the health literacy level of children in early adolescence.

Study design

A parallel group randomized controlled trial was conducted.

Methods

The study group consisted of sixth and seventh-grade students (aged 12–13 years) studying in a secondary school in Ankara. The study was completed by 80 students, 40 in the intervention group and 40 in the control group. The Health Literacy Education program, consisting of four sessions, was presented to the intervention group. The instruments were administered to both groups before the intervention (pre-test), one month (post-test), and three months after the intervention (follow-up test). The data was analyzed using the chi-square test, and the two-way mixed-design variance analysis with Bonferroni Multiple Comparison Test.

Results

Before the study, the adolescents in the intervention and control groups were similar regarding descriptive characteristics (p > 0.05). There was no statistically significant difference between the pre-test health literacy mean scores of the intervention and control groups (p > 0.05). After the health literacy education, health literacy post-test scores and follow-up test mean scores of the intervention group increased significantly compared to the control group (p < 0.05). The intervention had a large effect size (F = 414.683; η2 = 0.91) at the 95 % confidence interval.

Conclusions

The study revealed that health literacy education was effective in increasing the level of health literacy in early adolescence. It is recommended that health literacy education be added to the school education curriculum of adolescents.