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Assessing health literacy in the eastern and middle-eastern cultures
BACKGROUND: Health literacy is a term employed to assess the ability of people to meet the increasing demands related to health in a rapidly evolving society. Low health literacy can affect the social determinants of health, health outcomes and the use of healthcare services. The purpose of the stud...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4991078/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27538529 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3488-9 |
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author | Nair, Satish Chandrasekhar Satish, Karthyayani Priya Sreedharan, Jayadevan Ibrahim, Halah |
author_facet | Nair, Satish Chandrasekhar Satish, Karthyayani Priya Sreedharan, Jayadevan Ibrahim, Halah |
author_sort | Nair, Satish Chandrasekhar |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Health literacy is a term employed to assess the ability of people to meet the increasing demands related to health in a rapidly evolving society. Low health literacy can affect the social determinants of health, health outcomes and the use of healthcare services. The purpose of the study was to develop a survey construct to assess health literacy within the context of regional culture. Different socioeconomic status among the Eastern and Middle Eastern countries may restrict, health information access and utilization for those with low literacy. METHODS: By employing expert panel, Delphi technique, focus group methodologies, and pre-testing using participants (N = 900) from the UAE and India, a survey construct to the Eastern-Middle Eastern cultures was developed. Reliability was assessed using Cronbach’s α and validity using Factor analysis. Kiaser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) sampling adequacy and Bartlett’s tests were used to assess the strength of the relationship among the variables. RESULTS: Inclusion of non-health related items were found to be critical in the authentic assessment of health literacy in the Eastern and Middle Eastern population given the influence of social desirability. Thirty-two percentage of the original 19-item construct was eliminated by the focus group for reasons of relevance and impact for the local culture. Field pretesting participants from two countries, indicated overall construct reliability (Cronbach’s α =0.85), validity and consistency (KMO value of 0.92 and Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant). CONCLUSION: The Eastern-Middle Eastern Adult Health Literacy (EMAHL13), screening instrument is brief, simple, a useful indicator of whether or not a patient can read. It assessespatients’ ability to comprehend by distinguishing between health and non-health related items. The EMAHL13 will be a useful too for the reliable assessment of health literacy in countries, where culture plays a significant impact. This will be the first steptowards providing equitable access to healthcare for countries that have large populations with low socioeconomic status. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4991078 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-49910782016-08-20 Assessing health literacy in the eastern and middle-eastern cultures Nair, Satish Chandrasekhar Satish, Karthyayani Priya Sreedharan, Jayadevan Ibrahim, Halah BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Health literacy is a term employed to assess the ability of people to meet the increasing demands related to health in a rapidly evolving society. Low health literacy can affect the social determinants of health, health outcomes and the use of healthcare services. The purpose of the study was to develop a survey construct to assess health literacy within the context of regional culture. Different socioeconomic status among the Eastern and Middle Eastern countries may restrict, health information access and utilization for those with low literacy. METHODS: By employing expert panel, Delphi technique, focus group methodologies, and pre-testing using participants (N = 900) from the UAE and India, a survey construct to the Eastern-Middle Eastern cultures was developed. Reliability was assessed using Cronbach’s α and validity using Factor analysis. Kiaser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) sampling adequacy and Bartlett’s tests were used to assess the strength of the relationship among the variables. RESULTS: Inclusion of non-health related items were found to be critical in the authentic assessment of health literacy in the Eastern and Middle Eastern population given the influence of social desirability. Thirty-two percentage of the original 19-item construct was eliminated by the focus group for reasons of relevance and impact for the local culture. Field pretesting participants from two countries, indicated overall construct reliability (Cronbach’s α =0.85), validity and consistency (KMO value of 0.92 and Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant). CONCLUSION: The Eastern-Middle Eastern Adult Health Literacy (EMAHL13), screening instrument is brief, simple, a useful indicator of whether or not a patient can read. It assessespatients’ ability to comprehend by distinguishing between health and non-health related items. The EMAHL13 will be a useful too for the reliable assessment of health literacy in countries, where culture plays a significant impact. This will be the first steptowards providing equitable access to healthcare for countries that have large populations with low socioeconomic status. BioMed Central 2016-08-19 /pmc/articles/PMC4991078/ /pubmed/27538529 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3488-9 Text en © The Author(s). 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Nair, Satish Chandrasekhar Satish, Karthyayani Priya Sreedharan, Jayadevan Ibrahim, Halah Assessing health literacy in the eastern and middle-eastern cultures |
title | Assessing health literacy in the eastern and middle-eastern cultures |
title_full | Assessing health literacy in the eastern and middle-eastern cultures |
title_fullStr | Assessing health literacy in the eastern and middle-eastern cultures |
title_full_unstemmed | Assessing health literacy in the eastern and middle-eastern cultures |
title_short | Assessing health literacy in the eastern and middle-eastern cultures |
title_sort | assessing health literacy in the eastern and middle-eastern cultures |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4991078/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27538529 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3488-9 |
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