Fostering Literacy for Good Health Today

Domains assessed: Prose: Pronunciation, Prose: Comprehension, Numeracy, Media Literacy, Information seeking: Interactive media navigation, Information seeking: Document, Conceptual Knowledge, Comprehension, Communication: Speaker, Appraisal, Application/function

Specific context: Health Literacy Responsiveness, Health Literacy, General

Validation sample population age: Older Adults: 65+ years, Adults: 18 to 64 years

Modes of administration in validation study: Computer-based

Number of items: 20

Sample size in validation study: 236

Administration Time (minutes): 20 minutes

Language of validated version: English

Categorical scoring: Yes

Scoring categories: Response format is multiple choice. Scores on the 20-item booklet form can be related to levels of health literacy developed for national literacy surveys, including below basic, basic, intermediate, and proficient. Scoring and norms also allow for use a continuous measure. The test manual provides extensive information on domains assessed, measure development, and relations to other measures and other criteria (http://www.flightvidas.org) and is available for free download. Information on how scoring categories were developed and validated is also presented in Ownby RL et al (2019) Enhancing the impact of mobile health literacy interventions to reduce health disparities in Quarterly review of distance education 20 (1), 15-34. The author's version of this MS is available on PubMed at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6752043/.

Country where validated: United States of America

Content validity: Items were selected in 2 phases. Phase I developed 225 items that were grouped into three literacy formats (prose, document, quantitative) based on the goals of health literacy outlined in the 2004 Institute of Medicine report on health literacy. During Phase II, 98 items were administered to individuals from a wide range of ages, educational backgrounds, and across genders and race/ethnicity groups. An updated 20-item paper and pencil version is available that links performance to descriptive levels of health literacy (below basic, basic, intermediate, and proficient).

Reliability notes: HL: a = .85, NUM: a = .87, FACT: a = .74, LIS: a = .63