Development and validation of the high blood pressure-focused health literacy scale.
OBJECTIVE
While the role of health literacy in chronic disease management is well documented, few intervention studies have been reported. A major barrier to designing and implementing such interventions is the lack of valid health literacy tools. This study developed and tested a novel health literacy scale for individuals with high blood pressure (HBP).


METHODS
A two-step design process was used: In the construction phase, focus group studies and a literature review were conducted to generate a pool of items. The testing phase involved a psychometric evaluation and pilot-testing of the scale on hypertensive Korean Americans (n=386). The end product was a HBP-health literacy scale (HBP-HLS) with two essential domains, print literacy and functional health literacy.


RESULTS
Psychometric testing indicated that the scale was reliable (Kuder-Richardson-20 coefficient=0.98), valid (content validity index ≥0.8), and significantly correlated with theoretically selected variables (education, r=0.67, p<0.01; HBP knowledge, r=0.33, p<0.01).


CONCLUSIONS
The HBP-HLS demonstrated its utility for evaluating HBP management interventions in the community setting.


CONCLUSIONS
Utilizing the HBP-HLS should be considered as a potential tool for improving health literacy and evaluating intervention studies in the context of HBP management.
Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, Baltimore, MD 21205-2110, USA. mkim@son.jhmi.edu
Miyong T
MT
Kim
Hee-Jung
HJ
Song
Hae-Ra
HR
Han
Youngshin
Y
Song
Soohyun
S
Nam
Tam Hieu
TH
Nguyen
Ho-Chang Benjamin
HC
Lee
Kim B
KB
Kim
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001213:Asian; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice / Q000208:ethnology*; D057220:Health Literacy / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000208:ethnology*; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000295:instrumentation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*