Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 Jan 8:10:20552076231224596.
doi: 10.1177/20552076231224596. eCollection 2024 Jan-Dec.

Profiles of digital health literacy among university students and its association with mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: A latent profile analysis

Liangwen Ning  1   2 , Zhou Zheng  2 , Minghui Liu  2 , Shang Gao  2 , Xin Yang  2 , Jiasi Bi  3 , Xihe Yu  2 , Dahai Yi  3
Affiliations

Profiles of digital health literacy among university students and its association with mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: A latent profile analysis

Liangwen Ning et al. Digit Health. .

Abstract

Objective: Investigating the digital health literacy of university students can facilitate their effective acquisition of health information and adoption of appropriate protective behaviors. This study aims to explore the subtypes of digital health literacy among university students during the COVID-19 pandemic and their association with mental health outcomes.

Methods: From 17 November to 14 December 2022, a stratified random sampling approach was used to conduct an online questionnaire survey on digital health literacy, fear of COVID-19, and depression status among students at Jilin University, China. A total of 1060 valid responses were obtained in the survey. Latent profile analysis identified subtypes of digital health literacy and linear regression analyses were used to examine the association of digital health literacy to the mental health outcome.

Results: Three latent profiles were identified: Profile 1-low digital health literacy (n = 66, 6.23%), Profile 2-moderate digital health literacy (n = 706, 66.60%), and Profile 3-high digital health literacy (n = 288, 27.17%). Results from linear regression demonstrated a negative correlation between digital health literacy and fear of COVID-19 (B = -2.954, P < 0.001) as well as depression (B = -2.619, P < 0.001) among university students.

Conclusions: This study indicated that the majority of university students exhibit a moderate level of digital health literacy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the study validates a negative correlation between digital health literacy and mental health among university students.

Keywords: Digital health literacy; infodemic; latent profile analysis; mental health; university students.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Latent profiles of digital health literacy. Note: Profile 1 = low digital health literacy group, Profile 2 = moderate digital health literacy group, and Profile 3 = high digital health literacy group.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Hale T, Angrist N, Goldszmidt R, et al.. A global panel database of pandemic policies (Oxford COVID-19 government response tracker). Nat Hum Behav 2021; 5: 529–538. 2021/03/10. - PubMed
    1. Vismara M, Varinelli A, Pellegrini L, et al.. New challenges in facing cyberchondria during the coronavirus disease pandemic. Curr Opin Behav Sci 2022; 46: 101156. 2022/05/19. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Xie T, Tang M, Zhang RJ, et al.. The active role of the internet and social media use in nonpharmaceutical and pharmaceutical preventive measures against COVID-19. Healthcare (Basel) 2022; 10: 113. 2022/01/22. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Czerniak K, Pillai R, Parmar A, et al.. A scoping review of digital health interventions for combating COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation. J Am Med Inform Assoc 2023; 30: 752–760. 2023/01/29. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Vijaykumar S, Rogerson DT, Jin Y, et al.. Dynamics of social corrections to peers sharing COVID-19 misinformation on WhatsApp in Brazil. J Am Med Inform Assoc 2021; 29: 33–42. 2021/10/22. - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources