Validation of the Mental Health Promoting Knowledge Scale (MHPK-10) for the Portuguese population

Abstract

Introduction: Mental health literacy refers to the knowledge and abilities needed to promote mental health, and valid and comprehensive measures are needed to assess it. In Portugal, there are few validated measures to assess knowledge about the factors that promote positive mental health. Objective: To translate and culturally adapt the MHPK-10 to the Portuguese population. Material and Methods: The sample was recruited through a nonprobabilistic method, for convenience, in several institutions of the Porto Metropolitan Area and through an online questionnaire. The validation included the translation and cultural adaptation of the MHPK-10 original version and the analysis of the psychometric properties: reliability—test-retest and internal consistency, content validity, construct validity and criterion validity. Results: The sample consisted of 1,728 individuals aged between 14 and 95 years. The internal consistency value is reasonable (α= 0.79), and the test-retest values (r=0.72) support the reliability of the instrument. The factor analysis forced to a factor resulted in satisfactory values, explaining a variance of 35.92%. In the criterion validity, a low correlation was obtained (r=0.32). Conclusion: Psychometric properties appear to be reasonable, although additional studies are needed. The present work is a positive contribution to the validation of MHPK-10.

Reliability and validity of the positive mental health literacy scale in Chinese adolescents

“…The results showed that the total score of MHPK-10-C was significantly positively correlated with SWEMWBS, MHLQ, GWBS, LSS, and Self-rated health, and significantly negatively correlated with the DASS and loneliness scales (see Table 3 ). Table 3 shows that MHPK-10-C is closely related to positive psychology, MHL and individual mental health, which is consistent with the findings of Bjørnsen et al (2019) and Guimarães et al (2022) .…”

“… Pote and Fulcher (2021) evaluated many current MHL scales and believed that the psychological properties of MHPK-10 were sound, and suggested that other researchers use it. At present, revised versions of MHPK-10 have appeared in Portuguese ( Guimarães et al, 2022 ) and Turkish ( Özpulat et al, 2022 ).…”

“…Until now, China does not have a scale for evaluating positive MHL. Because MHPK-10 is a tool for evaluating “how to obtain and maintain good mental health” in MHL, can be completed quickly (there are only 10 questions), is easy to understand ( Guimarães et al, 2022 ) and each item can be translated into practice ( Bjørnsen et al, 2017 ), we have chosen to revise the MHPK-10 into Chinese. The problems to be addressed in this study were: (1) To create a culturally appropriate adaptation of MHPK-10 for a Chinese audience.…”

Mental Health Literacy and Stigma in a Municipality in the North of Portugal: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…The Portuguese version of Mental Health-Promoting Knowledge (MHPK-10) [ 27 , 28 ] aims to assess the knowledge about the factors that promote good mental health, consisting of 10 questions, in which each one has six response options, through a Likert scale, 1 corresponds to “Completely Wrong” and 5 corresponds to “Completely Correct”. There is also the option “I do not know”, which is equivalent to 0 points.…”

“…The final score of the instrument is obtained through the average score of the ten questions, and the authors define those values lower than 4 are attributed to a low level of knowledge. The reliability coefficient in the Portuguese population is 0.79 [ 28 ].…”