Health Educators in Florida’s County Public Health Departments: Frequency of and Perceived Confidence in Performing Entry-Level Competencies

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the activities of health educators in Florida’s county health departments concur with the responsibilities and competencies for health educators that have been established by the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC, 2003). Fifty-three (68.8%) county public health department health educators completed a modified version of the Self-Assessment for the Health Education Specialist instrument (National Task Force, 1987) to determine the frequency and perceived confidence in performing entry-level health educator responsibilities. The data indicated that the entry-level responsibilities reflect the current health education practice in this group of health educators. The responsibility areas of planning and implementing health programs received the highest mean scores for frequency of performance (M=3.98, SD=0.66; M=3.88, SD=0.89, respectively) and perceived confidence level (M=4.13, SD=0.75; M=4.14, SD=0.90, respectively), whereas communicating and evaluating received the lowest mean scores for frequency (M=3.46, SD=0.94; M=3.49, SD=1.08, respectively) and perceived confidence level (M=3.86, SD=0.84; M=3.61, SD=1.11, respectively). A statistically significant positive correlation (p