Association between MS-related knowledge, health literacy, self-efficacy, resilience, and quality of life in a large cohort of MS community members: A cross-sectional study

Background: Despite their potential importance, little is known about the associations between multiple sclerosis (MS) knowledge and other outcomes among MS community members.

Objective: To examine the relationships between MS-related knowledge, health literacy, self-efficacy, resilience, quality of life (QoL), and MS symptom severity in a cohort of MS community members.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study (N = 1993), we assessed a cohort of Understanding MS online course enrolees using means and standard deviations. We evaluated the impact of participant characteristics on outcomes using chi square, t-tests, and linear regression models, and assessed associations between outcomes using Pearson correlation.

Results: We found that the total cohort had moderate to high scores on all outcomes. People living with MS had an above average mean MS knowledge score, but below average QoL, resilience, and health literacy scores. The association of MS status with outcome scores was supported by linear regression models. MS knowledge was not correlated with any other outcome for either people living with MS or without MS.

Conclusions: MS knowledge was not associated with the other study outcomes, suggesting that educational interventions that solely aim to increase knowledge may be ineffective in improving health-related outcomes within the MS community.