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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Education and Promotion
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1440386
This article is part of the Research Topic The Role of Nursing in Public Health Promotion and Education View all 13 articles

Psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Media Health Literacy Questionnaire (MeHLit)

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain
  • 2 University of Valencia, Valencia, Valencian Community, Spain
  • 3 Hospital Clínico Universitario de Valencia, Valencia, Valencia, Spain
  • 4 Faculty of Health Sciences, Valencian International University, Valencia, Spain
  • 5 Hospital General Universitario De Valencia, Valencia, Spain
  • 6 Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain
  • 7 Faculty of Medicine, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain
  • 8 University Hospital of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Introduction: Media health literacy emerges as a response to the vast array of informational disorders prevalent in media communications. Given the absence of a measurement tool for this type of literacy in Spanish-speaking communities, the aim of the present study is to conduct a cross-cultural adaptation of the Media Health Literacy (MeHLit) questionnaire into Spanish and to analyze its psychometric properties in a sample of nursing students.Methods: The Spanish version of the MeHLit questionnaire (MeHLit-SV) was obtained through a process involving translation, back-translation, evaluation of the proposed items by a group of 22 experts, and a pilot study with 80 Spanish nursing students. Content validity was assessed using each item's content validity index (CVI) and Aiken´s V (VdA), while internal consistency was evaluated through Cronbach's Alpha.Results: Following the translation and adaptation process, the final version of the MeHLit-SV comprised 21 items organized into 5 dimensions. The CVI values exceeded 0.82 for all items, and the overall content validity index (S-CVI) was 0.9. Furthermore, the results of Aiken's V surpassed the threshold considered acceptable (0.70). After piloting, the questionnaire demonstrated high internal consistency with a Cronbach's alpha value of 0.936.The findings of this research support the reliability and validity of the MeHLit-SV for use among nursing students to measure their level of media health literacy. This questionnaire, with satisfactory psychometric properties and ease of administration, is an useful tool for assessing whether individuals possess the necessary skills to accurately analyze health information they encounter on a daily basis.

    Keywords: Media literacy, media health literacy, Cross-cultural adaptation, Psychometric validation, questionnaire

    Received: 29 May 2024; Accepted: 02 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Navas-Echazarreta, Juárez-Vela, Martinez-Sabater, Gea-Caballero, Chover-Sierra, Echaniz-Serrano, Ruiz de Viñaspre-Hernández, Cobos-Rincón, Sánchez-Conde, Fernández-Rodrigo, Rodríguez-Calvo and Satústegui–Dordá. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Raúl Juárez-Vela, University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain

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