Reliability and validity of the health literacy assessment questionnaire related to pre-pregnancy

ObjectiveTo evaluate the reliability and validity of the health literacy assessment questionnaire done prior to pregnancy and provide scientific measurement for assessment of health literacy in related population.

MethodsThe scoring rate and the critical ratio method were used to evaluate the degrees of difficulty and differentiation with each item.The internal consistency Cronbach′s α coefficient, split-half reliability and test-retest reliability were conducted to measure the reliability with the questions.The content validity and confirmatory factor analysis were used to test the validity.

ResultsEach question of the questionnaire was proved to have a good differentiation degree.The Cronbach′s α of general health literacy, healthcare literacy, disease prevention literacy and health promotion literacy were 0.864, 0.723, 0.694 and 0.704 respectively.The split-half reliability was 0.899.The test-retest reliability was 0.808.The experts thought each question had a good representativeness and the correlation coefficient between the scores of each question and the total score were 0.295~0.759 (P < 0.01), indicating that the content validity was good.The results of the confirmatory factor analysis showed that for the indicators of χ²/df, RMSEA, RMR, GFI and AGFI, in the Healthcare Literacy model, they were 3.134, 0.064, 0.073, 0.958 and 0.928 respectively; in Disease Prevention Literacy model, they were 2.686, 0.057, 0.060, 0.981 and 0.954 respectively; in Health Promotion Literacy model, they were 0.858, 0.000, 0.013, 0.997 and 0.988 respectively.

ConclusionThe health literacy assessment questionnaire done prior to pregnancy has acceptable validity and reliability.