Validation of the Cancer Health Literacy Test-30 for Populations Without Cancer

Abstract

Background: Cancer incidence continues to be common and highly consequential for future cancer patients, family members, and other untrained caregivers. Because low health literacy increases the likelihood of poor health outcomes, those with low health literacy would benefit from interventions to improve cancer health literacy. Objective: Our study was designed to address the need for measuring cancer health literacy in populations without cancer. Methods: The Cancer Health Literacy Test-30 (CHLT-30) was psychometrically tested on 512 people without a cancer diagnosis. Key Results: In this population without cancer, the CHLT-30 had strong psychometric properties including unidimensional measurement structure, high reliability, and invariant measurement between gender, race/ethnicity, and educational-attainment groups. Conclusion: These results support the use of the CHLT-30 to measure cancer health literacy in research studies of family members of people with cancer or the general public. The potential for using the CHLT-30 in clinical practice to assess the need for education for general patient and cancer patient populations is a future direction. [HLRP: Health Literacy Research and Practice. 2018;2(2):e58-e66.]. Plain Language Summary: Psychometric evidence suggests that the CHLT-30, originally developed for cancer patients, can be used to measure cancer health literacy of individuals with no history of cancer as well.