Adaptation and validation of a measure of health literacy in Taiwan: The Newest Vital Sign

Abstract

BackgroundHealth literacy (HL) refers to the ability to obtain, read, understand, and use basic health care information required to make appropriate health decisions and follow instructions for treatment. The Newest Vital Sign (NVS) is an instrument developed for assessing aspects of HL relevant to reading and numeracy skills. This study aimed to develop a traditional Chinese version of the NVS (NVS-TC) and assess its feasibility, reliability, and validity in Taiwanese patients with type 2 diabetes.MethodsThe original NVS was translated into traditional Chinese in accordance with established guidelines. A cognitive testing procedure was subsequently performed to evaluate the ease of understanding and acceptability of the test in 30 patients with diabetes. Thereafter, a quantitative survey (N = 232) was administered for validating the NVS-TC against the accepted standard tests of HL and participant education level.ResultsThe internal consistency (Cronbach's α) was 0.76. In accordance with a priori hypotheses, we found strong associations between the NVS-TC and objective HL and weaker associations between the NVS-TC and subjective HL. The known group validity of the NVS-TC was demonstrated through multivariate regression analyses, which showed that educational differences in the NVS-TC scores remained significant after adjustment for age, gender, and working in healthcare.ConclusionsThe results suggest that the NVS-TC is a reliable and valid tool that facilitates international comparable HL research in Taiwan. The NVS-TC can be used to investigate the role of HL in health care and can be easily incorporated into daily clinical practice for diabetes management.

Functional Health Literacy: Psychometric Properties of the Newest Vital Sign for Portuguese Adolescents (NVS-PTeen)

“…In this study and a few others [40,[56][57][58][59], the questionnaire was self-administrated with a potential reduced burden of administration compared to its hetero-administration [60]. Indeed, available evidence indicates that self-administered versions of the NVS can take up to 6 min to complete [40,59], whereas hetero-administered versions of the questionnaire can take up to 8 min to complete [33]. Unfortunately, due to the collective self-administration of the NVS instrument in the school-class setting employed in this study, no data on the completion time were gathered.…”

“…Several previous studies that adapted, validated, and investigated the psychometric properties of the NVS instrument used a face-to-face (hetero-)administered questionnaire (see Table S1 in Supplementary Material for an extensive list of these studies). In this study and a few others [40,[56][57][58][59], the questionnaire was self-administrated with a potential reduced burden of administration compared to its hetero-administration [60]. Indeed, available evidence indicates that self-administered versions of the NVS can take up to 6 min to complete [40,59], whereas hetero-administered versions of the questionnaire can take up to 8 min to complete [33].…”

Health Literacy, Health Behaviors, and Body Mass Index Impacts on Quality of Life: Cross-Sectional Study of University Students in Surabaya, Indonesia

“…The total number of correct answers was used as the score of FHL in the study, with four or more correct answers indicating average literacy, two to three correct responses showing marginal literacy, and fewer than two correct answers indicating low literacy [ 54 ]. NVS had consistency and validity as showed by preceding studies in America (Cronbach’s α (α): 0.76, criterion validity r = 0.59, p < 0.001) [ 54 ], in Netherland (α: 0.76, construct validity Pearson r = 0.53 − 0.20) [ 55 ], in Japan (α: 0.72, criterion validity Pearson r = 0.72 − (−0.30)) [ 56 ], in Italia (α: 0.74, construct validity Pearson r = 0.58) [ 57 ], and in Taiwan (α: 0.70, construct validity Pearson r = 0.58 − 0.18) [ 58 ]. The reliability of NVS in our study was α: 0.567, p ≤ 0.001.…”

Egészségműveltséget mérő kérdőívek validálása hazai felnőttmintán

“…Az elvégzett elemzések alapján az NVS-skála megbízhatónak bizonyult. A Cronbach-α értéke a korábbi kutatásokban [15,17,[24][25][26][27][28][29] általában kapott értékekhez (0,67-0,76) hasonló volt, és konzisztens értéket (az értékek terjedelme 0,05 volt) mutatott az alminták esetében is, bár megjegyzendő, hogy alacsonyabb mintaelemszámmal végzett vizsgálatokban publikáltak már magasabb (0,79-0,80) Cronbach-α-értékeket is [30][31]. Kisszámú vizsgálat irányult a kérdőív almintákon történő elemzésére, de a publikált eredmények összecsengenek saját megfigyeléseinkkel, az NVS-kérdőív a magasabb iskolai végzettségűek körében alacsonyabb Cronbach-α-értékkel jellemezhető [27].…”