Cargando…
Development and validation of a measure of health literacy in the UK: the newest vital sign
BACKGROUND: Health literacy (HL) is an important public health issue. Current measures have drawbacks in length and/or acceptability. The US-developed Newest Vital Sign (NVS) health literacy instrument measures both reading comprehension and numeracy skills using a nutrition label, takes 3 minutes t...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2013
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3681579/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23391329 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-116 |
_version_ | 1782273277205413888 |
---|---|
author | Rowlands, Gill Khazaezadeh, Nina Oteng-Ntim, Eugene Seed, Paul Barr, Suzanne Weiss, Barry D |
author_facet | Rowlands, Gill Khazaezadeh, Nina Oteng-Ntim, Eugene Seed, Paul Barr, Suzanne Weiss, Barry D |
author_sort | Rowlands, Gill |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Health literacy (HL) is an important public health issue. Current measures have drawbacks in length and/or acceptability. The US-developed Newest Vital Sign (NVS) health literacy instrument measures both reading comprehension and numeracy skills using a nutrition label, takes 3 minutes to administer, and has proven to be acceptable to research subjects. This study aimed to amend and validate it for the UK population. METHODS: We used a three-stage process; (1) a Delphi study with academic and clinical experts to amend the NVS label to reflect UK nutrition labeling (2) community-based cognitive testing to assess and improve ease of understanding and acceptability of the test (3) validation of the NVS-UK against an accepted standard test of health literacy, the Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults (TOFHLA) (Pearson’s r and the area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve) and participant educational level. A sample size calculation indicated that 250 participants would be required. Inclusion criteria were age 18–75 years and ability to converse in English. We excluded people working in the health field and those with impaired vision or inability to undertake the interview due to cognitive impairment or inability to converse in English. RESULTS: In the Delphi study, 28 experts reached consensus (3 cycles). Cognitive testing (80 participants) yielded an instrument that needed no further refinement. Validation testing (337 participants) showed high internal consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.74). Validation against the TOFHLA demonstrated a Pearson’s r of 0.49 and an area under the ROC curve of 0.81. CONCLUSIONS: The NVS-UK is a valid measure of HL. Its acceptability and ease of application makes it an ideal tool for use in the UK. It has potential uses in public health research including epidemiological surveys and randomized controlled trials, and in enabling practitioners to tailor care to patient need. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3681579 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2013 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-36815792013-06-14 Development and validation of a measure of health literacy in the UK: the newest vital sign Rowlands, Gill Khazaezadeh, Nina Oteng-Ntim, Eugene Seed, Paul Barr, Suzanne Weiss, Barry D BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Health literacy (HL) is an important public health issue. Current measures have drawbacks in length and/or acceptability. The US-developed Newest Vital Sign (NVS) health literacy instrument measures both reading comprehension and numeracy skills using a nutrition label, takes 3 minutes to administer, and has proven to be acceptable to research subjects. This study aimed to amend and validate it for the UK population. METHODS: We used a three-stage process; (1) a Delphi study with academic and clinical experts to amend the NVS label to reflect UK nutrition labeling (2) community-based cognitive testing to assess and improve ease of understanding and acceptability of the test (3) validation of the NVS-UK against an accepted standard test of health literacy, the Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults (TOFHLA) (Pearson’s r and the area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve) and participant educational level. A sample size calculation indicated that 250 participants would be required. Inclusion criteria were age 18–75 years and ability to converse in English. We excluded people working in the health field and those with impaired vision or inability to undertake the interview due to cognitive impairment or inability to converse in English. RESULTS: In the Delphi study, 28 experts reached consensus (3 cycles). Cognitive testing (80 participants) yielded an instrument that needed no further refinement. Validation testing (337 participants) showed high internal consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.74). Validation against the TOFHLA demonstrated a Pearson’s r of 0.49 and an area under the ROC curve of 0.81. CONCLUSIONS: The NVS-UK is a valid measure of HL. Its acceptability and ease of application makes it an ideal tool for use in the UK. It has potential uses in public health research including epidemiological surveys and randomized controlled trials, and in enabling practitioners to tailor care to patient need. BioMed Central 2013-02-07 /pmc/articles/PMC3681579/ /pubmed/23391329 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-116 Text en Copyright © 2013 Rowlands et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Rowlands, Gill Khazaezadeh, Nina Oteng-Ntim, Eugene Seed, Paul Barr, Suzanne Weiss, Barry D Development and validation of a measure of health literacy in the UK: the newest vital sign |
title | Development and validation of a measure of health literacy in the UK: the newest vital sign |
title_full | Development and validation of a measure of health literacy in the UK: the newest vital sign |
title_fullStr | Development and validation of a measure of health literacy in the UK: the newest vital sign |
title_full_unstemmed | Development and validation of a measure of health literacy in the UK: the newest vital sign |
title_short | Development and validation of a measure of health literacy in the UK: the newest vital sign |
title_sort | development and validation of a measure of health literacy in the uk: the newest vital sign |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3681579/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23391329 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-116 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT rowlandsgill developmentandvalidationofameasureofhealthliteracyintheukthenewestvitalsign AT khazaezadehnina developmentandvalidationofameasureofhealthliteracyintheukthenewestvitalsign AT otengntimeugene developmentandvalidationofameasureofhealthliteracyintheukthenewestvitalsign AT seedpaul developmentandvalidationofameasureofhealthliteracyintheukthenewestvitalsign AT barrsuzanne developmentandvalidationofameasureofhealthliteracyintheukthenewestvitalsign AT weissbarryd developmentandvalidationofameasureofhealthliteracyintheukthenewestvitalsign |