JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Limited cancer health literacy may be attributed to various factors. Although playing decisive roles in identifying individuals with limited cancer health literacy, these factors have not been sufficiently investigated, especially in China. There is a pressing need to ascertain significant factors that effectively identify Chinese people with poor cancer health literacy.

Objective:

This study aimed to identify factor associated with limited cancer health literacy among Chinese population based on the 6-item cancer health literacy test (CHLT-6).

Methods:

We first categorized Chinese study participants into two contrastive cancer health literacy: people having provided three or less correct answers were labelled as having limited cancer literacy, whereas those having returned between 4 and 6 correct answers were labelled as having adequate cancer health literacy. Then we adopted logistic regression to analyze factors that were closely related to limited cancer health literacy among at-risk study participants.

Results:

Logistic regression revealed significant factors that effectively predicted limited cancer health literacy, including (1) the male gender, (2) low education attainment, (3), age, (4) higher levels of self-assessed general disease knowledge, (5) lower levels of digital health literacy, (6) limited communicative health literacy, (7) lower general health numeracy, and (8) a high level of mistrust in health authorities (CRHL4).

Conclusions:

Drawing on regression analysis, we successfully identified 8 factors that could be used as statistically significant predictors of limited cancer health literacy among Chinese study participants. These findings can provide important clinical implications for supporting Chinese people with limited cancer health literacy through developing more targeted health educational programs and resources that better align with their actual skill levels.