In response to the many uncertainties and the ever-changing circumstances in society created by the COVID-19 pandemic, the COVID-HL Consortium is conducting a survey on (digital) health literacy in relation to COVID-19 among university students globally.

Not much is known about university student`s health literacy especially in relation to crisis situations that affect whole of societal life including social, economic and political impact on their everyday practices. Therefore, we want to shed light on how students face the challenges of this pandemic and how they cope with the fact that their lives are being turned upside down for the better or the worse. We are in particular interested in learning about their health literacy levels, their online information seeking profiles, the topics they search for and where, what attitudes they have towards their current situation living in this age of pandemic, their worries and future time perspectives as well as health and wellbeing status.

These issues are of particular importance as in relation to COVID-19 various health information is available on the Internet considering issues such as diagnosis, treatment, protective behaviour, preventive measures, dashboard statistics and recommendations. Reliable and trustworthy health information is key in this situation for citizens to act upon information and knowledge provided by governments, health authorities and scientist and thereby to help slowing down the spread of COVID-19. In turn, this makes healthy citizen behaviour a critical asset to ease down the pressure and burden that is being put upon the health care sector in their fight against the virus, the treatment of COVID-19 patients and the search for a vaccine. Citizen behaviour, however, has to be facilitated by adequate government action and policies not only by providing health information but health, social and economic services for citizens to cope with the situation.

The main goals of the COVID-HL-Survey are therefore to:

• Assess digital health literacy of university students during the COVID-19 pandemic
• Explore the different digital sources of information students consult when seeking for COVID-19 information and identify their preferred choices
• Capture students future time perspective/worries and there relation with student`s digital health literacy, information seeking behaviour and health situation
  
• Asess students Sense of Coherence and its association with student`s digital health literacy, information seeking behaviour and health situation

The benefit of the COVID-HL-Survey is to enable research, policy and practice to develop policies and programmes to foster healthy and protective behaviour, preventive measures and adherence with the COVID-19 policies. Digital health literacy will empower university students and all other population groups to take greater control in the prevention of COVID-19 and its spread, and are likely to lead to better health outcomes.