Background: Health information literacy is the ability of people to obtain, understand, screen, and apply health information. There is no investigation into how Chinese residents understand and use evidence.
Objectives: To develop the Health Information Literacy of Chinese Residents during COVID-19 Questionnaire based on evidence, measure its reliability and validity, and investigate the level of health information literacy for Chinese residents.
Methods: The development process of the questionnaire included the determination of questionnaire items, expert consultation, and validation. According to the National Residents Health Literacy Monitoring Questionnaire (2020) and the 2019 Informed Health Choices key concepts, the researchers drafted the questionnaire including all four dimensions of health information literacy. This was followed by several rounds of discussions by the working group. Experts in relevant fields were then invited to evaluate the draft questionnaire, and revisions were made. The reliability and validity of the finalized version were examined in Gansu Province, China. The method of stratified, multi-stage, simple random, and proportional probability sampling was adopted in the formal investigation. If the score was higher than 80% (more than 11 correct answers), we believe it had health information literacy.
Results: The research team preliminarily formulated 14 items encompassing the four dimensions of health information literacy. After consulting 28 experts in relevant fields, modifications were made. A convenience sample of 185 Chinese residents was invited to validate the questionnaire. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for internal consistency was 0.715, and the test-retest intra-class correlation coefficient after 2 weeks was 0.906, suggesting that the questionnaire content and measurement structure were relatively stable. A total of 2446 questionnaires were collected. After removing 86 invalid and unqualified questionnaires, the effective rate of the questionnaire was 96.48%. Only one-quarter of people have health information literacy and have knowledge of understanding and using evidence.
Conclusions: The number and speed of evidence production are increasing currently, but there is a huge gap between the public’s understanding and use of evidence and the production of evidence. Therefore, we not only need to produce high-quality evidence but also help the public with evidence-informed choices. Patient, public, and/or healthcare consumer involvement: Public involvement.