Developing and evaluating a relevant and feasible instrument for measuring health literacy of Canadian high school students

Abstract

Health literacy has come to play a critical role in health education and promotion, yet it is poorly understood in adolescents and few measurement tools exist. Standardized instruments to measure health literacy in adults assume it to be a derivative of general literacy. This paper reports on the development and the early-stage validation of a health literacy tool for high school students that measured skills to understand and evaluate health information. A systematic process was used to develop, score and validate items. Questionnaire data were collected from 275, primarily 10th grade students in three secondary schools in Vancouver, Canada that reflected variation in demographic profile. Forty-eight percent were male, and 69.1% spoke a language other than English. Bivariate correlations between background variables and the domain and overall health literacy scores were calculated. A regression model was developed using 15 explanatory variables. The R(2) value was 0.567. Key findings were that lower scores were achieved by males, students speaking a second language other than English, those who immigrated to Canada at a later age and those who skipped school more often. Unlike in general literacy where the family factors of mother's education and family affluence both played significant roles, these two factors failed to predict the health literacy of our school-aged sample. The most significant contributions of this work include the creation of an instrument for measuring adolescent health literacy and further emphasizing the distinction between health literacy and general literacy.

Health literacy among young adults: a short survey tool for public health and health promotion research

“…As such it adds a particular perspective, which, however, does not cover HL in the broader form that we have addressed in the present study. The Wu et al (Wu et al, 2010) study is closer to our focus. The authors developed a broader HL measurement tool for high school students and found it feasible for classroom use.…”

“…(Levin-Zamir et al, 2011)], education [expecting it to be positively associated with HL; see e.g. (Wu et al, 2010 andLevin-Zamir et al, 2011)] and a value-based item measuring the importance of a healthy lifestyle [ plausibility would suggest a positive association with HL; see also (Schmidt et al, 2010)]. Anticipated associations were investigated using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with a Bonferroni correction Health literacy among young adults 727 as post hoc procedure to compare the significance of differences in mean scores according to education and health value.…”

“…We thus take a health promotion perspective and define HL as a set of personal resources that must be available to individuals if they are to successfully handle common health matters (Rootman and Ronson, 2005;Kickbusch and Maag, 2006). Third, we assume that health literacy gives an advantage to people in all age groups (Kickbusch, 2006;Wu et al, 2010;Berkman et al, 2011;Levin-Zamir et al, 2011;Zamora and Clingerman, 2011;Paakkari and Paakkari, 2012), but we focus in the present study on young adults. Health literacy is important in young adulthood because many health practices, including risk behaviours like smoking and drinking, are established in this stage of life (Manganello, 2008;Due et al, 2011;Stone et al, 2012;Dermota et al, 2013).…”

Letramento funcional em saúde na adolescência: associação com determinantes sociais e percepção de contextos de violência

“…Most of the studies point to better functional health literacy for women (12,16,19) . Only one study (11) indicated better functional health literacy in men and associated this finding with the lower educational level of the women who took part.…”

A utilização das fontes de informação em saúde como preditor da literacia em saúde sobre uso de substâncias nos adolescentes

“…Os rapazes afirmam receber mais informação acerca deste tema do que as raparigas (Ackard & Neumark-Sztainer, 2001, Al-Qallaf, Al-Otaibi, & Othman, 2012e Kwan et al, 2010. Apesar da informação recebida acerca dos vários tópi-cos em saúde, os níveis baixos de literacia em saúde nos adolescentes rondam os 10 a 40% (Sanders, Federico, Klass, Abrams, & Dreyer, 2009), sendo os níveis de literacia em saúde superiores no sexo feminino, e nos jovens com nacionalidade, naturalidade ou língua estrangeira (Wu, et al, 2010).…”