Mahmoud Tavousi, Mahdi Ebadi, Esmaeil Fattahi, Leila Jahangiry, Akram Hashemi, Mina Hashemiparast et al . Health literacy measures: A systematic review of the literature. Payesh 2015; 14 (4) :485-496
URL:
http://payeshjournal.ir/article-1-230-en.html
1- Health Metrics Research Center, Iranian Institutes for Health Sciences Research, ACECR, Tehran, Iran
2- School of Public Health, Sabzevar University Medical Sciences, Sabzevar, Iran
3- Health education & Promotion Department, School of Public Health, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences,Tabriz, Iran
Abstract: (5682 Views)
Objective (s): Health literacy is a relatively new emerging concept in public health. It is also a new area for research with links to communication. It has been suggested that poor health literacy poses a major barrier to public’s health and might represent a major cost to health care system. The aim of this study was to review instruments that measure health literacy.
Methods: A review was undertaken of all the full publications in the English language biomedical journals between 1993 and 2012. The search included the combination of keywords ‘health literacy’, and ‘tool’, or ‘instrument’, or ‘scale’, or ‘questionnaire’, or ‘measure’, that appeared in the titles/abstracts of the publications. In addition, a manual search was performed to include additional papers of potential interest.
Results: In all 1788 citations were identified. After screening, 1265 duplicate citations were excluded. The remaining 523 citations were further examined and 438 citations were found irrelevant. Finally the full texts of 85 papers were assessed. Of these 42 papers were found to be relevant and were included in this systematic review. We identified 23 instruments that were used to measure health literacy. These all were introduced.
Conclusion: Lack of comprehensive instrument to measure health literacy was evident. Thus, developing a new instrument seems necessary. A new tool should be simple, short, and inclusive.
type of study:
Descriptive |
Accepted: 2015/07/20 | ePublished ahead of print: 2015/08/1 | Published: 2015/07/15