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State of the science of health literacy measures: Validity implications for minority populations
Tam H Nguyen1, Hyunjeong Park2, Hae-Ra Han3
1School of Nursing, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, USA.
Objectives:
To review the evidence supporting the validity of health literacy (HL) measures for ethnic minority populations.
Methods:
PubMed, CINAHL, and PsycINFO databases were searched for HL measures between 1965 and 2013.
Results:
A total of 109HL measures were identified; 37 were non-English HL measures and 72 were English language measures. Of the 72 English language measures, 17 did not specify the racial/ethnic characteristic of their sample. Of the remaining 55 measures, 10 (18%) did not include blacks, 30 (55%) did not include Hispanics, and 35 (64%) did not include Asians in their validation sample. When Hispanic and Asian Americans were included, they accounted for small percentages in the overall sample. Between 2005-2013, a growing number of REALM and TOFHLA translations were identified, and new HL measures for specific cultural/linguistic groups within and outside the United States were developed.
Conclusions:
While there are a growing number of new and translated HL measures for minority populations, many existing HL measures have not been properly validated for minority groups.
Practice Implications:
HL measures that have not been properly validated for a given population should be piloted before wider use. In addition, improving HL instrument development/validation methods are imperative to increase the validity of these measures for minority populations.
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