Poor Performance of Children Age 7 to 13 Years on the Newest Vital Sign

Abstract

Valid and reliable instruments are needed to assess health literacy in children. Although the Newest Vital Sign (NVS) has been well established for use in adults, reports of its use in children have only recently received attention in the literature. Whereas some researchers have reported successful use of the NVS in children as young as age 7 years, others have suggested it is best used in children age 10 years and older. This analysis reports on the performance of the NVS in children age 7 to 13 years, adding to the growing evidence related to the use of the NVS in pediatric populations. Overall, children in this sample performed poorly on the NVS, which refutes previous reports. Differences in child samples and NVS administration procedures may provide some explanation for the lower-than-anticipated NVS performance in this sample. Interpreting the NVS based on educational standards and expectations may provide additional information to determine age-appropriate recommendations for NVS use in children. [ HLRP: Health Literacy Research and Practice . 2018;2(4):e175–e179.]

Health literacy in adolescents with sickle cell disease: The influence of caregiver health literacy

“…The NVS is validated in adults and is widely used to assess health literacy in the adult population (Weiss et al, ). Several studies have also assessed the reliability and validity of the NVS in children and adolescents with mixed results due to inconsistencies in ages of the samples (Driessnack, Chung, Perkhounkova, & Hein, ; Howe, Van Scoyoc, Alexander, & Stevenson, ; Warsh, Chari, Badaczewski, Hossain, & Sharif, ). Because very little validity and reliability data exists on the use of the NVS in adolescents, validity and reliability of the NVS for use in adolescents with SCD was examined in the previous pilot study (Caldwell, Carter, Becker, & Mackert, ).…”

The Online Use of the Newest Vital Sign in Adolescents

“…One valid and reliable tool for evaluating health literacy is the Newest Vital Sign (NVS) (Weiss et al, 2005). The inperson, paper and pencil, facilitated administration of the NVS has been explored with adults, adolescents, and children in previous literature (Caldwell et al, 2018;Driessnack et al, 2014;Howe et al, 2018;Warsh et al, 2014;Weiss et al, 2005). However, there is a dearth of literature describing the online use of the NVS or any validated health literacy tool, hindering efforts to conduct online health literacy research.…”

The Use of the Newest Vital Sign in Children

“…As the individual who led the team that developed the Newest Vital Sign (NVS) health literacy assessment instrument, I feel compelled to comment on the study by Howe, Van Scoyoc, Alexander, and Stevenson (2018) that was recently published in this journal.…”

“…The study by Howe et al (2018) is not the first to evaluate performance of the NVS in children. There have been many of them, several of which are cited in their article.…”