ArticleHealth literacy research and practice2021
Health Literacy, Education, and Internal Consistency of Psychological Scales.
Article in Health literacy research and practice, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Knowledge, attitudes and practices towards cardiac rehabilitation among patients with heart failure.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Health status in patients with limited health literacy; development and validity of the Clinical COPD Questionnaire graphic (CCQg).NPJ primary care respiratory medicine · 2026Article
- Knowledge, attitude, and practice towards postmenopausal osteoporosis among postmenopausal women: A cross-sectional study.Preventive medicine reports · 2025Article
- Clinical Patterns of Dyslipidemia in Patients With Initial-Treatment and Drug-Naïve Schizophrenia.Alpha psychiatry · 2025Article
- Knowledge, attitude, and practice toward sleep disorders and sleep hygiene among perimenopausal women.Scientific reports · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMeasurement error might lead to biased estimates, causing ineffective interventions and service delivery. Identifying measurement error of health-related instruments helps develop accurate assessment of health-related constructs.
objectiveWe compared the internal consistency of eight psychological scales used in health research in groups with adequate versus limited health literacy and in groups with higher versus lower education.
methodsParticipants ( KEY
resultsAmong all the 13 subscales, scale internal consistency was significantly lower among people with limited health literacy than those with adequate health literacy for five subscales: information avoidance for colon cancer (0.80 vs. 0.88), unpredictability of diabetes (0.84 vs. 0.88), perceived severity for diabetes (0.66 vs. 0.75), need for cognition (0.63 vs. 0.82), and social desirability (0.52 vs. 0.68). Internal consistency was significantly lower among people who had a high school education or less than among those with more than a high school education for four scales: perceived severity of diabetes (0.70 vs. 0.75), present orientation (0.60 vs. 0.66), need for cognition (0.73 vs. 0.80), and social desirability (0.61 vs. 0.70).
conclusionsSeveral psychological instruments demonstrated significantly lower internal consistency when used in a sample with limited health literacy or education. To advance health disparities research, we need to develop new scales with alternative conceptualizations of the constructs to produce a measure that is reliable among multiple populations.
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