Development and validation of a Chinese parental health literacy questionnaire for caregivers of children 0 to 3 years old

BACKGROUND: Given the limited information on parental health literacy measurements, the study aimed to develop and validate the Chinese Parental Health Literacy Questionnaire for caregivers of children 0 to 3 years old. METHODS: We conducted a validity and reliability study of the questionnaire through a cross-sectional survey and test-retest analysis respectively between March and April 2017. We recruited 807 caregivers of children 0 to 3 years old, among them 101 caregivers completed the test-retest assessment with 2 weeks interval. The reliability was determined by internal consistency, spilt-half reliability and test-retest reliability. The construct validity was assessed by confirmatory factor analysis. RESULTS: The 39-question Chinese Parental Health Literacy Questionnaire was demonstrated high internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.89), spilt-half reliability (Spearman-Brown coefficient = 0.92) and test-retest reliability (Pearson correlation coefficient = 0.82). The confirmatory factor analysis showed that the construct of the questionnaire fitted well with the hypothetical model. The participants’ test scores of the Chinese Parental Health Literacy Questionnaire in the cross-sectional survey were positively associated with caregivers being mothers, more educated, the children with Shanghai Hukou, having only one child in the family, and higher family income. CONCLUSION: The Chinese Parental Health Literacy Questionnaire demonstrated good reliability and validity, which could potentially be used as an effective evaluation instrument to assess parental health literacy. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12887-019-1670-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.