Assessing adolescents' critical health literacy: How is trust in government leadership associated with knowledge of COVID-19?
Authors
McGuire, Luke
Joy, Angelina
Law, Fidelia
Rutland, Adam
Drews, Marc
Mulvey, Kelly Lynn
Hartstone-Rose, Adam
Publication Date
2021Journal Title
PLoS One
ISSN
1932-6203
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Volume
16
Issue
11
Language
en
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Mathews, C. J., McGuire, L., Joy, A., Law, F., Winterbottom, M., Rutland, A., Drews, M., et al. (2021). Assessing adolescents' critical health literacy: How is trust in government leadership associated with knowledge of COVID-19?. PLoS One, 16 (11) https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259523
Abstract
This study explored relations between COVID-19 news source, trust in COVID-19 information source, and COVID-19 health literacy in 194 STEM-oriented adolescents and young adults from the US and the UK. Analyses suggest that adolescents use both traditional news (e.g., TV or newspapers) and social media news to acquire information about COVID-19 and have average levels of COVID-19 health literacy. Hierarchical linear regression analyses suggest that the association between traditional news media and COVID-19 health literacy depends on participants' level of trust in their government leader. For youth in both the US and the UK who used traditional media for information about COVID-19 and who have higher trust in their respective government leader (i.e., former US President Donald Trump and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson) had lower COVID-19 health literacy. Results highlight how youth are learning about the pandemic and the importance of not only considering their information source, but also their levels of trust in their government leaders.
Keywords
Research Article, Medicine and health sciences, People and places, Social sciences, Computer and information sciences, Science policy
Sponsorship
U.S. National Science Foundation (DRL-1831593)
Wellcome Trust (206259/Z/17/Z)
Economic and Social Research Council (206259/Z/17/Z)
Identifiers
pone-d-21-12139
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259523
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/331042
Rights
Licence:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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