Development and Validation of the Health Literacy Assessment Questionnaire of Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University Students

Identifying the components affecting people's health literacy is one of the important areas in the field of medical sciences. In this study, the construction and validation of a health literacy questionnaire has been done.

The current research is descriptive. The statistical sample of the research is 327 graduate students of Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University who were selected by simple random method. To identify the items of the questionnaire, databases and related sources were checked first. The result of the investigation was the preparation of the initial version of the health literacy questionnaire with 28 items. Exploratory factor analysis was used to extract dimensions and items, and Cronbach's alpha was used to check the reliability. Data statistical processing was done using SPSS and Monte Carlo software. Cronbach's alpha of the questionnaire was equal to 0.89.

Before the factor analysis, the correlation coefficients of the scores between the questionnaire questions were checked. According to the results of Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test and Bartlett's Test of Sphericity, exploratory factor analysis on the questionnaire was deemed justified. The findings of factor analysis showed that by removing two items from the whole questionnaire and analyzing the rest and rotating the results with the Varimax method, four dimensions of "access to health information"; "understanding health information"; "evaluation of health information"; and "use of health information" is obtained.

According to the findings, the proposed health literacy questionnaire has the necessary validity to assess the health literacy of adults.