Association of health literacy and drinking behaviors among middle school students in six provinces of China / 中国学校卫生

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To explore the association between health literacy and drinking behaviors among middle school students in six provinces of China, and to provide scientific basis for the prevention and intervention of drinking behaviors.@*Methods@#From November 2015 to January 2016, 22 628 students were enrolled from Ulanqab, Shenyang, Xinxiang, Bengbu, Chongqing and Yangjiang by multistage stratified cluster sampling method. And a questionnaire survey was conducted among them to collect demographic information, health literacy and drinking behaviors. Rates on drinking behaviors were compared in students with specific characteristics. Multiple Logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine the association between health literacy and drinking behaviors.@*Results@#The proportion of ever drinking, current drinking, binge drinking, drunkenness was 60.0%(13 580), 16.8%(3 799), 5.9%(1 344) and 9.9%(2 250), respectively. After adjusting for gender, grade, family address, siblings, accommodation type, parental educational level, and self reported family income, compared to the high level health literacy, the low level health literacy was significantly associated with ever drinking (OR=1.76, 95%CI=1.62-1.91), current drinking(OR=1.37, 95%CI=1.23-1.52), binge drinking (OR=1.39, 95%CI=1.18-1.63), and drunkenness(OR=1.68, 95%CI=1.47-1.92), respectively(P<0.01).@*Conclusion@#Health literacy of middle school students was related to drinking behaviors. The occurrence of health risk behaviors such as drinking can be prevented and reduced by improving students health literacy level.