Measuring functional, communicative, and critical health literacy among diabetic patients.
OBJECTIVE
Health literacy (HL), the capacity of individuals to access, understand, and use health information to make informed and appropriate health-related decisions, has been recognized as an important concept in patient education and disease management. This study examined the psychometric properties of newly developed scales for measuring three different levels of HL (i.e., functional, communicative, and critical) in patients with diabetes.


METHODS
The reliability and validity of the three HL scales were evaluated in a sample of 138 outpatients with type 2 diabetes. In addition, sociodemographic and clinical characteristics, knowledge of diabetes, information-seeking behaviors, and self-efficacy were assessed for each patient through a self-report questionnaire and review of electronic medical records.


RESULTS
Scale items were constructed to directly reflect the definition of HL. Internal consistency of functional, communicative, and critical HL scales was adequately high (alpha = 0.84, alpha = 0.77, and alpha = 0.65, respectively). Three interpretable factors were identified in exploratory factor analysis. Correlations between HL scales and other measures supported the construct validity of the scales. The three HL scales were only moderately correlated with each other, suggesting that each represents a different domain of HL abilities and skills.


CONCLUSIONS
Our newly developed HL scales are reliable and valid measures of three types of HL in diabetic patients. Exploring a patient's HL levels may provide a better understanding of the patient's potential barriers to self-management of disease and health-promoting behaviors.
Ishikawa
Hirono
H
Department of Hygiene and Public Health, Teikyo University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan. hirono-tky@umin.ac.jp
Takeuchi
Takeaki
T
Yano
Eiji
E
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001294:Attitude to Health; D003142:Communication; D032882:Comprehension; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors