Developing a measure of communicative and critical health literacy: a pilot study of Japanese office workers

Abstract

With the increase in media reports and rapid diffusion of the Internet, the skills in finding and utilizing health information (health literacy; HL) are becoming important in maintaining and promoting health. This study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of a brief measure to assess major components of communicative and critical HL among Japanese office workers, in order to consider its applicability to health promotion at workplace. The participants were 190 male office workers at a Japanese company. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed at the annual health checkup, in which HL, health-related behaviors and coping with job stress were asked. Also, the number of somatic symptoms reported by the worker was counted out of the eight symptoms in the health checkup questionnaire. The higher HL group was more likely to have regular eating patterns and exercise weekly, and tended to be a never smoker. In coping with job stress, those with higher HL were more likely to actively solve the problems or seek support from others, whereas those with lower HL were more likely to be resigned to the situation. Further, lower HL group reported significantly greater number of somatic symptoms than higher HL group. These findings were generally as hypothesized, supporting the validity of the HL scale among office workers. Further research on HL is needed to explore the extent and impact of HL on health outcomes.

Relation between communicative and critical health literacy and physical activity in Japanese adults: a cross-sectional study

“…Von Wagner et al and Chang reported that functional HL was not related to exercise 14,18) , whereas Ishikawa et al reported that communicative and critical HL was significantly related to exercise among Japanese adults 16) . Therefore, "recreation" physical activity could be related to communicative and critical HL, but not functional HL.…”

“…The communicative and critical HL scale developed by Ishikawa et al 16) was used in this study. This scale contains 3 items about communicative HL (i-iii) and 2 items about critical HL (iv-v).…”

“…The average of the raw scores for the five items was calculated to obtain an overall communicative and critical HL score for each subject. The participants were divided into two groups according to the median score of communicative and critical HL (high HL, ≥3.8; low HL, <3.8), similar to a previous study 16) .…”

“…First, because some studies have not shown consistent results of the relation between HL and physical activity 5,[13][14][15][16][17][18] , it is important to examine this relation further. Second, since there isn't any known study that has examined the relation of communicative and critical HL to physical activity, it is necessary to conduct research for examining their relation.…”

Associations Between Older Adults' Spoken Interactive Health Literacy and Selected Health Care and Health Communication Outcomes

“…One key element absent from current measures of health literacy-but very much evident in current conceptualizations (Ishikawa et al, 2008;Nutbeam, 2000;Roter, Erby, Larson, & Ellington, 2007)-is any representation of health literacy as an achievement co-constructed in social contexts by patients=consumers in synchrony with health-information providers. Thus, for example, one prominent model of health literacy posits ''interactional health literacy'' as one of three levels of development in this domain (Nutbeam, 2000).…”