Objective To develop a Chinese version of health literacy scale for occupational population, and to assess its reliability, validity, and application through a pilot study.
Methods Currently employed residents were recruited from urban and rural de jure residents in one district of Shanghai. Initial items of the scale were generated on the basis of literature review and experts consultation. Cognitive interviews were conducted in employees from various job categories to revise the initial items and develop a scale draft. Communites, buildings, and families were selected by multistage cluster random sampling method. All the members in the selected families were interviewed on demographics, health literacy, behavior characteristics, and other information after informed consent obtained. EpiData 3.1 software was used to establish database, and reliability, validity, and application effect of the scale were evaluated using SPSS 18.0 software.
Results The health literacy scale for employed residents consisted of 26 items under 7 dimensions (information evaluation and utilization, workfare utilization, health care information accessibility, job hazard identification ability, job hazard protection capability, right-protection awareness of occupational health, and health awareness). The seven common factors explained 55.762% variance variation and KMO (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin) value was 0.873 in the factor analysis. The factor load coefficients were between 0.438 and 0.928. The Cronbach's α value of the scale was 0.887, and that of each dimension of the scale ranged from 0.654 to 0.900; the ICC value of the health literacy level measured in the two surveys was 0.938, and that of each item ranged from 0.779 to 0.956, indicating high internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The result indicated that the scale showed competent to distinguish health literacy level of occupational population.
Conclusion The health literacy scale for occupational population has acceptable reliability, validity, and application effect, thus could be applied to assess the health literacy in occupational population.
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