A cross-sectional study of health literacy and health behaviors among adults in South Korea: findings from a principal component analysis

Background Health literacy and health behaviors are closely related and play key roles in health promotion. Previous studies have reported that low health literacy is associated with unhealthy behaviors. It is important to identify which latent dimensions of health literacy are particularly associated with health behaviors. This study aimed to examine the association between components of health literacy and health behaviors among South Korean adults.Methods A cross-sectional study design was used with data from the Korea Health Panel Survey. The principal component analysis was applied to the HLS-EU-Q16 to extract dimensions of health literacy, and multivariate logistic regression was conducted to assess their associations with health behaviors.Results Health literacy tertiles were significantly associated with socioeconomic status, insurance coverage, chronic disease, disability, self-rated health status, and health behaviors (p Conclusions This study used principal component analysis to identify two underlying components of health literacy and demonstrated that each component had a distinct relationship with health behaviors. The findings highlight the need for policies that foster proactive health literacy and encourage active information-seeking.