The Polish Version of the Short Scale Measuring Health Literacy in Adolescence

BACKGROUND: Recent years saw the development of international tools for measuring health competencies understood as health literacy (HL). One of them is the short index Health Literacy for School–Aged Children (HLSAC) implemented by the members of the Health Behaviour in School–aged Children (HBSC) network. So far, when researching the properties of this instrument, less attention has been devoted to the correlation of HLSAC with other tools related to health. THE AIM: of the paper is to present selected psychometric features of the HLSAC index in a sample of Polish pupils, supplemented by the preliminary analysis of its association with the health locus of control. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The information collected relates to 630 junior secondary school students surveyed in Poland in 2016 as part of the HLSAC questionnaire pilot study. The Multidimensional Health Locus of Control (MHLC) scale by K. Wallston was used as the additional module for Poland. It differentiates among three dimensions of health control: internal, external – dependent on other people, and external – dependent on random factors. It was checked which HLC dimension correlates most strongly with HL. RESULTS: It was demonstrated that the HLSAC scale consisting of 10 questions has a very good reliability in the Polish version (Cronbach alfa = 0.851) and a one–factor structure. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a unidimensional model (RMSEA = 0.082; CFI=0.922; TLI=0.877). The HLSAC most strongly correlates with the internal health locus of control (r=0.376; p<0.001), slightly less with the influence of other people (r=0.153; p<0.001), while the correlation with the random factor health locus of control is insignificant (p=0.947). It was found that there is a weak, however significant, positive correlation between family affluence and HLSAC (p=0.041). CONCLUSIONS: The analyses conducted demonstrated that the Polish version of HLSAC has good psychometric features. The relatively higher correlation between HLSAC and internal rather than external health locus of control was confirmed. The practical effect of the pilot study was to develop an improved version of the HLSAC scale, which has been recommended for the mainstream HBSC 2018 survey.