Health Literacy and Desirable Health Behaviors of spa personnel in Phuket

Abstract

This cross-sectional descriptive research aimed to study the general status, level of health literacy, level of desirable health behaviors, and the relationship between the health literacy of service providers in health spa establishments and their desirable health behaviors in providing health services in health spa establishments in Phuket Province. The sample consisted of 320 health spa service providers aged 18 years and above, selected through simple random sampling. The research instruments included questionnaires, which comprised a general status questionnaire with 7 items, a health literacy questionnaire assessing access to health information, understanding health information, evaluating health information, and applying health information, with 20 items, and a desirable health behavior questionnaire with 15 items. The content validity index of the questions ranged from 0.6 to 1.0, and the reliability of the instruments was 0.84, 0.82, and 0.89, respectively. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Pearson's correlation coefficient.

              The findings revealed that the overall health literacy level was high, the overall level of desirable health behaviors was good, and health literacy in terms of accessing, understanding, evaluating, and applying health information had a positive correlation with desirable health behaviors at a statistically significant level (r = .389, p < .01; r = .333, p < .01; r = .443, p < .01; r = .382, p < .01, respectively).

              Therefore, enhancing the capacity of health spa service providers to improve their health literacy is crucial to delivering standardized and effective services.