Psychometric properties and factorial structure of the Spanish version of the HLS-EU-Q16 questionary in Venezuelan adults

Judith Francisco-Pérez, Víctor López-Guerra, Gabriel Ortíz, Angélica Rojas, Carmen Martínez and Ronald Serrano

PLOS ONE, 2025, vol. 20, issue 6, 1-14

Abstract: Health literacy is a variable determined by personal skills and resources for information management and health-related decision making. Studies have shown that it positively influences health maintenance and disease prevention. To contribute to the lack of validated and adapted instruments in Latin America, this study aimed to analyze the psychometric properties of the HLS-EU-Q16 questionnaire short version in Spanish, in Venezuelan adult population. A non-probabilistic intentional sample of 972 (mean age 41.55 years, SD = 15.64; 67.5% female) was surveyed using a cross-sectional design. Data analysis included exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), factorial invariance, assessment of internal consistency and group contrasting method according to educational level and economic capacity. The three-factor model showed the best fit to the data (X2/df = 1.52; CFI = .990; TLI = .988; SRMR = .056; RMSEA = .033) and such model remained invariant across sex. The internal consistency was adequate, with Alpha and Omega coefficients for the total scale (α = .88, ω = .88) and three factors: health care (α = .83, ω = .81), disease prevention (α = .73, ω = .73) and health promotion (α = .88, ω = .88). The results indicate that people with postgraduate studies report higher levels of health literacy and people who have borrowed money to buy food or medicines, who have stopped seeing their doctor or taking medicines due to lack of money have low levels of health literacy. The HLS-EU-Q16 questionnaire adapted to Venezuela is reliable, valid and easy to apply. Hence, it will be useful for measuring health literacy and generating preventive programs.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0324782 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 24782&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0324782

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0324782

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().