JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

New healthcare services such as smart healthcare and digital therapeutics have greatly expanded. To effectively utilize these services, digital health literacy skills, involving the use of digital devices to explore and understand health information, are important. Older adults requiring consistent health management highlight the need for enhanced digital health literacy skills. To address this issue, it is imperative to develop methods to assess older adults’ digital health literacy levels.

Objective:

This study aimed to develop a tool to measure digital health literacy. To this end, it reviewed existing literature to identify the components of digital health literacy, drafted preliminary items, and developed a scale using a representative sample.

Methods:

We conducted a primary survey targeting 600 adults aged 55–75 years and performed an exploratory factor analysis on 74 preliminary items. Items with low factor loadings were removed, and their contents were modified to enhance their validity. Then, we conducted a secondary survey with 400 participants to perform exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses.

Results:

A digital health literacy scale consisting of 25 items was developed. This scale comprises four sub-factors: utilization of digital devices, understanding health information, utilization and decision regarding health information, and use intention. The validity and reliability test results indicated that this scale is highly reliable and has good structural validity.

Conclusions:

This study is a significant first step toward enhancing digital health literacy among older adults by developing an appropriate tool for measuring digital health literacy. We expect this study to contribute to the future provision of tailored education and treatment based on individual literacy levels.