Abstract

Health choices and behaviour patterns adopted by individuals have far-reaching consequences on the outcome of their health. Information is an important resource to enable useful decision-making. This study was carried out to explore the determinants of health-enhancing choices among undergraduates of Babcock University, Ilishan-Remo, Nigeria. The study was a descriptive cross-sectional design in which a validated 36-item instrument was developed to measure level of health-information, health literacy and health-enhancing choices; and a test of independence to identify determinants of health-enhancing choices among the independent variables. A total of 425 students were selected by a combination of stratified and purposive sampling techniques following counselling about the study and gave their consent to participate. The data collected was analysed using descriptive statistics of frequency distribution, mean and standard deviation, ANOVA and was subjected to test of independence using the regression analysis. All statistical tests were performed at a 0.05 level of significance. Mean age of respondents was 29.1±6.62 years and there were more females (55.3%) than men (44.7%). Results showed that most respondents (57.6%) obtained health information from only one source while 69(16.2.4%) of the respondents obtained health information from more than three sources. Health literacy measured on a 25-point rating scale showed that the participants scored 11.77±3.63 and rating for health-enhancing choices for the respondents measured on a 27-point scale was 16.67±4.02. Health information resource access (r=0.107; p=0.03) and health literacy (r=0.282; p<0.001) correlated significantly with health-enhancing choices of the respondents respectively, however, health literacy (B=12.95; R² =0.079; β=0.282, p<0.001) was a better predictor of health-enhancing choices of the respondents. Therefore, the study concludes that health-enhancing choices are better made when health literacy is improved through robust access of health information resources.