The swedish version of the electronic health literacy scale: Prospective psychometric evaluation study including thresholds levels

Abstract

Background: To enhance the efficacy of information and communication, health care has increasingly turned to digitalization. Electronic health (eHealth) is an important factor that influences the use and receipt of benefits from Web-based health resources. Consequently, the concept of eHealth literacy has emerged, and in 2006 Norman and Skinner developed an 8-item self-report instrument to measure these skills: The eHealth Literacy Scale (eHEALS). However, the eHEALS has not been tested for reliability and validity in the general Swedish population and no threshold values have been established. Objective: The aim of this study was to translate and adapt eHEALS into a Swedish version; evaluate convergent validity and psychometric properties; and determine threshold levels for inadequate, problematic, and sufficient eHealth literacy. Methods: Prospective psychometric evaluation study included 323 participants equally distributed between sexes with a mean age of 49 years recruited from 12 different arenas. Results: There were some difficulties translating the English concept health resources. This resulted in this concept being translated as health information (ie, Hälsoinformation in Swedish). The eHEALS total score was 29.3 (SD 6.2), Cronbach alpha .94, Spearman-Brown coefficient .96, and response rate 94.6%. All a priori hypotheses were confirmed, supporting convergent validity. The test-retest reliability indicated an almost perfect agreement, .86 (P