| Summary: | 碩士 === 靜宜大學 === 管理碩士在職專班 === 98 === Cancer has been the leading cause of death in Taiwan since 1982. Much of the suffering and death from cancer could be prevented by more systematic efforts to reduce tobacco use, improve diet and physical activity and expand the use of cancer screening tests. Amid increased concerns about the adverse consequences of low health literacy, it remains unclear how health literacy affects health status, health service utilization and health behaviors. However, the literature states that the health literacy has no constant effect on health behaviors. In addition, studies have shown a variety of factors influence behavior. Commonly, the Health Belief Model has been widely used to explain and predict health behaviors. Thus, the purpose of this study was to identify whether the health belief has moderating effects on health literacy and health behaviors. Data were collected from a convenience sample of public who were aged 18 or older from north, central and south regions in Taiwan. A total of 297 respondents completed self-administered questionnaires that assessed health literacy, health behaviors and cancer screening beliefs related to cancer prevention. The result of the study was as following. First, the demography as married, female, medical background, age groups 36 to 45 and 56 and above has better health literacy. Secondly, health literacy is the effective factor of predicting health behaviors. In addition, cancer preventive health literacy has significantly positive influence on health promotion behaviors and negative influence on health risk behaviors. Thirdly, the perceived benefits was a significantly moderator of the cancer preventive health literacy and health promoting behaviors relation, but not influenced health risk behaviors. As a result, if people can enhance health literacy with increase awareness of the benefits of cancer prevention, that will help to considerably raise health promotion behaviors.
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