Determination of the levels and factors affecting of e-health literacy of university students

The research was conducted as a descriptive study to determine the e-health literacy levels of university students and the influencing factors. A total of 485 students at Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University, all of whom are the second year students respectively at the Department of Computer Engineering, Department of Nursing, Law Faculty and Faculty of Medicine during the spring semester of 2014-2015 academic year and who take Basic Information Technology course, made up the universe of the Research and 284 students who agreed to participate in the study made up the sample of the research. Survey data were collected through questionnaires on the characteristics of the students and e-Health Literacy Scale. Number and percentage, Student's t test, Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis H test, Shapiro Wilks test, Pearson correlation test, Somer d test and Cramer's V test were used in the study. The median score of the university students in the study was 25.5 (min=8, max = 40) and the Cronbach alpha value was 0.89 in the e-Health Literacy Scale and the e-health literacy levels of the students in the nursing department were higher than the students in the other departments. However, no significant difference was found between the sections (p>0.05). Students who have graduated from vocational and health vocational high school, have researched health related magazines / articles in the last week, do not have difficulties in reaching health related information, believe in the validity of the information obtained from the web related to health and using the health sites used by their friends, had a significantly higher scale of median scores (p<0.05). The necessary suggestions have been made in the direction of the results obtained from the research. The necessary recommendations are submitted in line with the results obtained from the research.