Levels of health literacy among Australians with chronic conditions engaging with healthcare providers and navigating the health system

Full description

Health literacy plays an important role in improving person-centred care and population health outcomes. With the rate of chronic conditions increasing globally, it is important to understand the associations between levels of health literacy and the ability to navigate and engage with the healthcare system.

A 39-item survey was designed and distributed to Australian adults aged ≥ 18. Participants were recruited between 29 November and 14 December 2018.

In addition to researcher-devised and consumer-devised questions, items about self-reported health status, health conditions and PHI were drawn from the National Health Survey. Questions about financial stress were derived from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. Questions about care affordability were drawn from the Commonwealth Fund survey and questions about accessibility were sourced from the Menzies-Nous surveys. Questions about diagnosed chronic conditions were defined by the AIHW. Minor post-weighting adjustments were made by age, sex and state to ensure the data accurately reflected population distribution according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in June 2018. Data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics (IBM SPSS Statistics V24). Weighting was undertaken through a survey raking technique using the anesrake package in R.

The full survey questions are included in file 2, and with codes that correspond to the datasheet.