Development of a Health Literacy Test for Primary School Students

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to develop a Health Literacy test for primary school students. The procedures were to synthesize Health Literacy factors, to construct Health Literacy test for primary students and to check the quality of the Health Literacy test. The sample of the study consisted of 2,056 upper primary students and the try out group for developing test was 352 primary students. The sample was drawn by purposive multistage random sampling and the try out group was drawn by simple random sampling from the schools under the Office of the Basic Education commission. The reliability of the test was analyzed by using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. The criterion related validities were confirmed by the correlations between the Health Literacy scores and Health assessment scores; physical, mental and social health. The statistics were descriptive, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, and Pearson’s products moment correlation. The research findings were as follows:

1) The Health Literacy test consisted of 4 Dimensions include Access, Learning, Decision and Using. There were of 50 items, each question had 3 choices which score weight ranged from 1-3. 2) The reliability of the test by using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient value for tryout group and the sample group were .735 and .701 respectively. 3) The correlation between the Health Literacy scores and the scores from physical health and social health assessment of the try out group were .115 and .185 respectively. For the sample group in the data collection step, the correlation value between the Health Literacy scores and physical health and social health scores were .058 and .164 185 respectively.