Development of the Health Literacy Assessment Scale for Adolescents (HAS-A)

Area of Science:

• Adolescent Health
• Health Literacy Measurement
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Health literacy is vital for healthcare navigation and communication.
• Existing health literacy tools are limited for adolescents and often require in-person administration.
• Adolescents face unique challenges in understanding and processing health information.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a self-report health literacy scale for adolescents.
• To assess four key domains: obtaining, communicating, understanding, and processing health information.
• To provide a tool for situations where in-person assessment is not feasible.

Main Methods:

• Recruited 272 adolescents aged 12-19 from a pediatric clinic and the community.
• Administered multiple health literacy assessments, including the Rapid Estimate of Adolescent Literacy in Medicine-Teen and Newest Vital Sign.
• Utilized factor analysis to identify and refine scale items for self-report.

Main Results:

• Factor analysis identified three reliable subscales: communication (5 items, alpha=0.77), confusion (4 items, alpha=0.73), and functional health literacy (6 items, alpha=0.76).
• The developed scales demonstrated reasonable performance when compared with validation items.
• The study confirmed that a significant number of adolescents exhibit low health literacy skills.

Conclusions:

• Self-report scales are a viable method for assessing adolescent health literacy when in-person administration is not practical.
• This tool can facilitate research into adolescent health communication and outcomes.
• Further validation with diverse adolescent populations is recommended to ensure generalizability.