Digital health literacy (DHL) enables people to search, find, understand, and use health information from electronic sources to solve a health problem. The issue of DHL has gained special importance during the Covid 19 pandemic since it is a new disease, and it has many unknowns.

The aim of the study was to investigate university students’ DHL and web-based information-seeking behaviors during the Covid-19 pandemic in Turkey.

This cross-sectional study is part of Covid-HL Consortium and conducted in four universities in Turkey with a convenience sample. An online survey was used to collect data about sociodemographic information, web-based information-seeking behavior and validated Digital Health Literacy Instrument (DHLI) adapted to the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Descriptive analysis was presented as percentages, mean, median and standard deviation. Comparative analysis was done by using Chi square and T test.

A total of 1665 students participated of whom 70.7% were female and mean age was 21.02 (SD=3.17). Cronbach’s α for DHLI was 82%, mean DHLI score was 40.55 (SD=6.28) (range:15-60). Female students had lower mean score (40.26, SD=5.89) than men (41.29, SD=7.15) (p<0.05); students who reported low social status had lower mean score (39.27, SD=6.14) than the students in the high social status (41.85, SD=7.07) (p<0.05). The DHL level for Covid-19 did not differ according to the subject students were studying, type (public vs private) and location of university. Search engines, social media and news portals were most often used electronic sources by students. The most searched topics related to Covid-19 were the symptoms, the number of infected cases and restrictions.

The most difficult issues were evaluating the reliability of health-related information (74.3%) and determining whether the information was written with a commercial interest (69.3%) among DHLI dimensions. Students also reported that when they search health related information, it was very important that the information was verified and updated.

The level of DHL among university students on Covid 19 related information was moderate. It seems a priority to make reliable sources of information accessible and to improve the competence of resource reliability of university students.

Health literacy and COVID-19

Improving Health Literacy Using Information Technology