Psychometric properties of the adapted instrument European Health Literacy Survey Questionnaire short-short form.
Fábio Luiz Mialhe, Katarinne Lima Moraes, Fernanda Maria Rovai Bado and 3 others
PMID 34231791WHAT IT FOUND
The short Brazilian Portuguese health literacy survey is reliable and measures one single skill.
It identifies patients struggling to understand medical advice. Use it to spot those needing clearer instructions, but note that most adults in this sample had problematic or inadequate literacy.
Key findings
01The adapted 6-question health literacy instrument showed consistent internal structure and reliability across three different sample groups.
02When applied to the sample, only 2% of adults had sufficient health literacy, while 51.7% had problematic levels and 46.3% had inadequate levels.
03The instrument measures a single dimension of health literacy rather than separate domains for disease prevention, health care, and health promotion.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study validates the instrument's internal structure but does not compare it to a gold-standard measure of health literacy. The sample was drawn from specific cities in Brazil, so the classification cut-offs and prevalence rates may not apply directly to other populations. The high percentage of patients with inadequate literacy may reflect the specific socioeconomic characteristics of the sampled communities rather than a universal trend.
Declared interests
No specific funding sources or conflicts of interest are declared in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume the three original domains of the full 47-item questionnaire (health care, promotion, prevention) are separately measured by this short form. The data shows it functions as a single overall score, so you cannot interpret low scores in specific areas based on the item content alone.