A Psychometric Analysis of the Health Literate Health Care Organization-10 Item Questionnaire

Abstract

The concept of a Health Literate Healthcare Organization (HLHO) is a relatively new approach to health literacy that moves the focus from the individual patient to the overarching health care system. The HLHO-10 questionnaire was developed internationally to assess the 10 Attributes of HLHOs as described by participants of the Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Health Literacy. The purpose of this study was to establish reliability and validity of the HLHO-10 among a sample of United States hospitals. Reliability and validity were established through assessing the factor structure for the HLHO-10 and psychometric evaluation. The HLHO-10 was found to be reliable with a Cronbach's alpha of .855 and a two-factor structure was revealed through exploratory factor analysis. Additional research is needed to further validate use of the HLHO-10 in the U.S., but initial findings of this emerging tool are promising and timely as the issue of health literacy comes to the forefront of U.S. health care systems and associated regulatory agencies