Investigation of Electronic Health Literacy Level Prediction on the Self-Care During Pregnancy

Abstract

During the corona disease pandemic, in order to prevent the gathering of people in health-providing centers and minimize the spread of the corona disease, remote health services became so popular causing the widespread use of the internet for providing health-related information. This study was conducted to determine the predictability of electronic literacy level on self-care during pregnancy of pregnant women in Tabriz. Methods: This study was a descriptive-analytical cross-sectional study. A total number of 360 pregnant women with a minimum age of 18 years with less than 36 weeks of pregnancy, lived in Tabriz city at the time of the study and were referred to health centers for care. In this research, multi-stage stratified sampling based on ten municipal areas was used to select health centers. Eligible women were randomly selected and invited by phone call to participate in the study and complete the questionnaires that were designed using the Porsline software and sent to the participants through the WhatsApp application. Data analysis was performed using descriptive and analytical statistics and t-test analysis, ANOVA, and regression analysis. Results: The results showed that the most common device used by pregnant women to receive information from the internet is a smartphone. Also, the most used platform for searching for information on the internet is web browser pages. The mean of electronic health literacy and the mean of self-care of pregnant women respectively were 10.7±5.76 and 12.06±9.82. The results showed that the most important predictors of pregnant women's self-care are having a history of intentional abortion (p=0.01), whether the pregnancy was wanted or not (p=0.004), whether the mother of the pregnant woman was alive (p=0.001), mother's support or sister (p=0.001), spouse's support (p=0.001), being under the care of a specialist doctor (p=0.001), spouse's occupation (p=0.001), spouse's level of education (p=0.025), and the most important predictors of electronic health are the level of education of the pregnant woman (p = 0.038), the occupation of the pregnant woman's spouse (p = 0.001), and the education of the spouse (p = 0.01). The results of multivariate linear regression analysis showed that spousal support of pregnant women (B=4.089, p=0.023) and visit by a specialist doctor (B=4.78, p=0.009) were related to self-care during pregnancy. On the other hand, the results of multivariable linear regression showed that electronic health literacy is related to self-care during pregnancy. (B=0.644, p=0.001). Discussion and conclusion: The results of this research showed that, with an increase in electronic health literacy, self-care increases in pregnant women, therefore, measures should be taken to increase the electronic health literacy of people in the society, in such a way that health experts and policymakers provide sufficient information about the legitimacy and validity of the resources used by people, in order to make better use of the virtual space of education.