Health Literacy Levels of Students – GeKoLeSt

Research period: 1 February 2021 to 20 December 2025

The role of patients and clients within the healthcare system is changing. They are no longer just passive recipients of healthcare services, but co-producers of their own health. In the sense of joint decision-making in the physiotherapy process, patients are actively involved in the design of therapy and participate in the decision-making process for or against a particular treatment. Accordingly, the promotion of health literacy (HL) is an important goal.
In order to be able to advise, guide and support all people in their professional life according to their individual abilities, physiotherapists need an adequate level of HL on all three levels of HL (functional, interactive/communicative and critical). The aim of the study is to first develop a questionnaire that captures all three levels of GC in a differentiated manner (including comprehensibility testing and validation). The questionnaire will then be used to longitudinally assess the GK level of physiotherapy students at the beginning, during and at the end of their studies.
As part of the implementation, existing questionnaires for surveying GK are identified as part of a comprehensive literature search. Two authors then analyse the questionnaires with reference to theoretical concepts (Nutbeam, 2000; Sørensen et al., 2012, Sykes et al. 2013). The individual items of the questionnaires are assigned to the different levels of GK. The wording of individual items is concretised so that they can be clearly assigned to the three levels. This is followed by a comprehensibility test with physiotherapy students (n=5). The resulting questionnaire is currently (06/2021) being validated with physiotherapy students (approx. n=40). Based on the theoretical concepts, a confirmatory factor analysis is being carried out.

• The findings are to be implemented in the further curricular planning of the Bachelor's degree programme in Physiotherapy in order to be able to train all levels of health competence of Physiotherapy students at an even higher level.
• The findings are also to be incorporated into possible adjustments to the admission procedure for the study programs.
• In a next step, the use of the instrument to measure the three levels of health literacy is conceivable for other study programs in the Department of Health Sciences in order to obtain an even more comprehensive picture of the health literacy level of students at departmental level and to be able to take appropriate measures.
• Another aim is to further develop the instrument for surveying students' eHealth literacy.