Health Information Seeking Behavior of Pregnant Women Referring To Health Centers and its Relationship with Their Health Literacy Level

Abstract

Improving information retrieval skills and promoting maternal health literacy of pregnant women leads to their ability to access, understand, and use health information. It leads to maintaining and promoting the health of of pregnant women. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between health literacy and the health information-seeking behavior of pregnant women referring to health centers in Bushehr. This is applied research that is carried out in a survey method. The statistical population of this study is 271 pregnant women referring to health centers in Bushehr who were selected by stratified random sampling method. Data were collected using health information behavior and health literacy questionnaires and analyzed by SPSS software version 24. Findings showed that 25% of women had good health information-seeking behavior. Also, 51% of pregnant women had inadequate health literacy, 25% had border health literacy, and 24% had adequate health literacy. The findings also confirmed a significant relationship between health information-seeking behavior and health literacy (P = 0.011). As the low and unfavorable health literacy among the pregnant women in Bushehr municipality, health policymakers should pay more attention to improving such a situation. If we accept that the poor information-seeking behavior alongside the low health literacy causes the wrong health information, then it can be advised that the health information-seeking skills education becomes a part of the policymakers' planning. Furthermore, they have to provide proper educational materials with an understandable language to enable pregnant women.

Keywords

• health information behavior
• health literacy
• pregnant women