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Health Informatics Journal
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Information Literacy as a Health Promoting Determinant

Stefan Ek

Department of Social and Political Sciences/Information Studies, Åbo Akademi University, Tavastgatan 13, FIN-20500 Åbo, Finland, Tel: 358 2 215 3407, Fax: 358 2 215 4581 sek{at}abo.fi

Research is unanimous that health correlates positively with socio-economic position regardless of measuring scales. The current stress is on sociocultural and psychosocial factors. In his theoretical model of the relationships between stressors, coping and health, Aaron Antonovsky has highlighted the inadequacy of a pathogenic orientation and proposed a salutogenic orientation. He asked why resources like wealth, ego strength, cultural stability and social support promoted health. He developed the concept of the sense of coherence and integrated it into a general model of information processing. This article presents results of a survey of a representative sample (N = 2500) of the Finnish population aged 18-65 years. The objective was to examine the influence of the sense of coherence on perceived health, media literacy, the level of reliability of different health information sources and interest in health information. The results indicate that the impact of the sense of coherence is considerable.

Key Words: coping • Finland • media literacy • perceived health • sense of coherence

Health Informatics Journal, Vol. 10, No. 2, 139-153 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/1460458204042238
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