Bilingual health literacy assessment using the Talking Touchscreen/la Pantalla Parlanchina: Development and pilot testing.
OBJECTIVE
Current health literacy measures are too long, imprecise, or have questionable equivalence of English and Spanish versions. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and pilot testing of a new bilingual computer-based health literacy assessment tool.


METHODS
We analyzed literacy data from three large studies. Using a working definition of health literacy, we developed new prose, document and quantitative items in English and Spanish. Items were pilot tested on 97 English- and 134 Spanish-speaking participants to assess item difficulty.


RESULTS
Items covered topics relevant to primary care patients and providers. English- and Spanish-speaking participants understood the tasks involved in answering each type of question. The English Talking Touchscreen was easy to use and the English and Spanish items provided good coverage of the difficulty continuum.


CONCLUSIONS
Qualitative and quantitative results provided useful information on computer acceptability and initial item difficulty. After the items have been administered on the Talking Touchscreen (la Pantalla Parlanchina) to 600 English-speaking (and 600 Spanish-speaking) primary care patients, we will develop a computer adaptive test.


CONCLUSIONS
This health literacy tool will enable clinicians and researchers to more precisely determine the level at which low health literacy adversely affects health and healthcare utilization.
Yost
Kathleen J
KJ
Center on Outcomes, Research and Education (CORE), NorthShore University HealthSystem, Evanston, IL, United States.
Webster
Kimberly
K
Baker
David W
DW
Choi
Seung W
SW
Bode
Rita K
RK
Hahn
Elizabeth A
EA
D000328:Adult; D004522:Educational Status; D005006:Ethnicity; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D019303:Multilingualism; D019212:Multimedia; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011594:Psychometrics; D036301:Qualitative Research; D014584:User-Computer Interface