Portuguese Version of the HLS-EU-Q6 and HLS-EU-Q16 Questionnaire: Psychometric Properties

Health literacy refers to the competencies of individuals and the general population to navigate all the areas of health care, making health decisions. Health professionals need a set of skills and information to adapt to people's health literacy. To succeed, it is crucial to determine the health literacy level of a population, in this case, the Portuguese. This study aims to measure the psychometric properties of the Portuguese version of HLS-EU-Q16 and HLS-EU-Q6 from the long form of HLS-EU-Q47, already validated for Portugal. To analyse these results, a comparison was made with the HLS-EU-PT index. Spearman correlation analysis was performed between the single items and scale scores. Cronbach's alphas for all the indexes were calculated. For the statistical analysis, SPSS (version 28.0) was used. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for HLS-EU-PT-Q16 internal consistency was 0.89 overall, and for HLS-EU-PT-Q6 was 0.78 overall. Indexes were not normally distributed, and the Spearman correlation was computed. The correlation between G HL47 and G HL16 indexes was ρ = 0.95 (p < 0.001), and between G HL6 and HLS-EU-PT-Q6 was perfect. The HLS-EU-PT-Q16 and HLS-EU-PT-Q6 are concise and present adequate psychometric properties to measure the HL level of the Portuguese population. However, more similarities are found between the 47-item and the 16-item forms.