Functional health literacy: psychometric properties of the newest vital sign for Portuguese adolescents (NVS-PTeen)

• Autor(a) principal: Santos, Osvaldo
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Stefanovska-Petkovska, Miodraga, Virgolino, Ana, Miranda, Ana Cristina, Costa, Joana, Fernandes, Elisabete, Cardoso, Susana, Carneiro, António Vaz
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.8/5480
• topic: Functional health literacy; Questionaire; Psychometrics; Item response theory; Adolescents

Self-management of health requires skills to obtain, process, understand, and use healthrelated information. Assessment of adolescents’ functional health literacy requires valid, reliable,and low-burden tools. The main objective of this study was to adapt and study the psychometric properties of the Newest Vital Sign for the Portuguese adolescents’ population (NVS-PTeen). Classic psychometric indicators of reliability and validity were combined with item response theory (IRT) analyses in a cross-sectional survey, complemented with a 3-month test-retest assessment. The NVSPTeen was self-administered to students enrolled in grades 8 to 12 (12 to 17 years old) in a school setting. Overall, 386 students (191 girls) from 16 classes of the same school participated in the study (mean age = 14.5; SD = 1.5). Internal reliability of the NVS-PTeen was = 0.60. The NVS-PTeen total score was positively and significantly correlated with Portuguese (r = 0.28) and mathematics scores (r = 0.31), school years (r = 0.31), and age (r = 0.19). Similar to the original scale (for the U.S.), the NVSPTeen is composed of two dimensions, reading-related literacy and numeracy. Temporal reliability is adequate, though with a learning effect. IRT analyses revealed differences in difficulty and discriminative capacity among items, all with adequate outfit and infit values. Results showed that the NVS-PTeen is valid and reliable, sensible to inter-individual educational differences, and adequate for regular screening of functional health literacy in adolescents.