the relationship of health literacy with hypertension self-efficacy and general self-efficacy among schoolteachers

Background: health literacy and self-efficacy are two key factors behind a wide variety of health-related outcomes. objectives: this study aimed to examine the relationship of health literacy with hypertension self-efficacy and general self-efficacy. methods: this cross-sectional descriptive-analytical study was conducted in 2016. study sample consisted of 202 schoolteachers who were randomly selected from elementary and secondary schools in qaenat county, iran. participants provided informed con- sent for participation and personally completed a demographic questionnaire, the short test of functional health literacy in adults, sherer’s general self-efficacy scale, and mularcik’s hypertension self-efficacy scale. the spss program (v. 19.0) was employed for data analysis through running the independent-sample t, chi-square, tukey’s post hoc tests, pearson correlation analysis, and one-way analysis of variance at a significance level of less than 0.05. results: the means of participants’ health literacy, hypertension self-efficacy, and general self-efficacy were 26.8 ± 7.5, 47.9 ± 11.5, and 38.1 ± 8.9, respectively. most participants had adequate health literacy (77.2%) and high hypertension self-efficacy (71.3%), while only 9.9% of them had high general self-efficacy. there was a significant negative relationship between general self-efficacy and educational level. moreover, health literacy had a significant negative correlation with age (r = -0.17; p = 0.013) and significant positive correlations with hypertension self-efficacy (r = 0.26; p = 0.001) and general self-efficacy (r = 0.15; p = 0.04). conclusions: health literacy has significant relationships with hypertension self-efficacy and general self-efficacy. therefore, ed- ucational interventions can be used to improve health literacy, promote hypertension self-efficacy and general self-efficacy, and facilitate hypertension management.