Abstract:
The objectives of this study were to develop the health literacy of hypertension test in Thailand, to test validity and reliability and to create norm. Samples were 1,446 patients with high blood pressure diagnosed from the hypertension clinics in the hospitals under the Ministry of Public Health, Thailand. The test was developed and divided into 3 latent variables and 4 observed variables for health literacy concepts. There were 12 variables to access, understand, appraise, and apply data to self-healthcare; access, understand, appraise, and apply data to risk prevention; and access, understand, appraise and apply data to health promotion. Indexes of Item-Objective Congruence (IOC) from 7 experts and Cronbachs alpha coefficient of the entire questionnaire were evaluated content validity and reliability. The Confirmatory Factor Analysis with LISREL also analyzed for construct validity. To set up the norm score referenced criteria to allocate the levels of hypertension health literacy of Thailand. The result showed that the item Objective Congruence was 0.68 and the Cronbachs alpha coefficient was 0.864. The model was fit to empirical data. The norm score of health literacy of hypertension disease in Thailand was divided into three levels according to the percentiles which were low, fair, and high. The sample with the high score was the most being 35.25%. The next rank was the low score being 32.50% and the fair score being 32.25%. In conclusion, the health literacy of Thai hypertension test was strong validity and reliability. The test can be used to evaluate health literacy of hypertension patients.