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Physical health literacy of student–athletes.
- Source :
- Health & Social Care in the Community; Sep2021, Vol. 29 Issue 5, pe116-e125, 10p, 3 Charts
- Publication Year :
- 2021
-
Abstract
- Student–athletes are a vulnerable population who face many unique stressors and often engage in risky physical behaviours. Understanding that high levels of health literacy (HL) can lead to improved health knowledge and decreased negative health outcomes, the purpose of this study was to assess the HL of both student–athletes and their non‐athlete peers attending NCAA Division I, II and III institutions. Specifically, guided by Nutbeam's (2000) framework of HL, we assessed functional, communicative and critical HL in 205 student–athletes and 205 non‐athlete students using the All Aspects of Health Literacy Scale. Compared to non‐athletes, student–athletes had lower functional HL (b = 0.20; p <.001; d = 0.21), lower communicative HL (b = 0.12; p <.01; d = 0.13) and higher critical HL (b = 0.11; p <.05; d = 0.11). These findings suggest that additional interventions may be needed to increase the self‐sufficiency of student–athletes to care for personal physical health. As social work in sport is an emerging subspecialty of the profession, social workers may consider increased involvement in advocating for this group by working with individuals, coaches and teams to decrease stigma in requesting health services, attending to the complexity of interacting systems and stressors in student–athletes' lives in therapeutic interventions, and connecting them to empowering health education resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- COLLEGE students
EVALUATION of medical care
HEALTH education
STATISTICS
ANALYSIS of variance
SOCIAL workers
HEALTH status indicators
SOCIAL stigma
REGRESSION analysis
HEALTH literacy
SOCIOECONOMIC factors
T-test (Statistics)
AT-risk people
DESCRIPTIVE statistics
DATA analysis software
STATISTICAL correlation
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 09660410
- Volume :
- 29
- Issue :
- 5
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Health & Social Care in the Community
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 152165271
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.13251