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Updated: Nov 6, 2025

Oral Health Assessment by Lay Personnel for Older Adults
Published on: February 2, 2020
Concordance between two instruments for health literacy assessment
Luana Resende Cangussú1, Eduardo Antonio Sartori Alho1, Felipe Esdras Lucas Cardoso1
1Universidade Federal do Vale do São Francisco, Paulo Afonso, BA, Brasil.
Objetivo:
To determine agreement between the Short Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults (S-TOFHLA) and the Short Assessment of Health Literacy for Portuguese-speaking Adults (SAHLPA-18) measurement instruments as a strategy for estimating concurrent validity.
Methods:
This was a cross-sectional study conducted with users of the Brazilian National Health System. An agreement approach using a weighted Kappa test for qualitative data was applied in order to test for concurrent validity.
Results:
372 individuals participated. It was found that 66% and 62% of them did not have an adequate level of literacy according to SAHLPA-18 and S-TOFHLA, respectively. There was strong correlation between the instruments (p<0.001; r=0.60), although the 65.3% agreement of correct answers found was considered weak (Kappa=0.35; p<0.001).
Conclusion:
The SAHLPA-18 and S-TOFHLA instruments have different constructs and poor agreement. Use of different instruments is indicated in research intended to measure level of literacy, as is the development of instruments specific to health conditions that allow results close to the real context of individuals to be obtained.
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