Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Senior Citizens Science Literacy and Health Self-Efficacy : Sheila liveblogs from #ecil2017

I'm in a session on science literacy at the European Conference on Information Literacy, and Ágústa Pálsdóttir is talking on Senior Citizens Science Literacy and Health Self-Efficacy.
She noted that with the growth in the proportion of older people, it was important for them to be engaged in health promotion interventions. Understanding scientific communications about health is an intrinsic part of this.
The speaker proposed the concept of Media and Health Information Literacy (to include health literacy) and science literacy. The aim of the study she was talking about was to examine the self-efficacy of people aged 60 plus (divided into 60-67 and 68 plus). The study asked how seniors perceive their health self-efficacy, how this self-efficacy rating related to age, gender and education. Out of a larger random sample, 176 were 60 and older. The Perceived health self-confidence scale was used (possibly the one described in https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10150421). The results showed that the seniors had good confidence in the health self-efficacy. There was some difference by education (people with lower educational levels having less confidence) particularly in the younger group. This has implications for health education.

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