RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF THE DEMENTIA HEALTH LITERACY SCALE: A PILOT STUDY

Background In spite of the high prevalence of dementia (9.19%) in South Korea (CRCD, 2017), little is known about Dementia Health Literacy (DHL) among Korean older adults. The current study aimed to develop a DHL scale culturally competent and tailors to Korean older adults. To develop this scale, this research adopted the Integrated Model of Health Literacy (Sørensen et al., 2012) as a theoretical framework with four dimensions: (1) Access; (2) Understand; (3) Appraisal; and (4) Apply. Methods The data is from the 2016 Dementia Literacy Survey (DLS) utilized a probability sampling method. From the DLS, 440 participants of the survey were used for the final analysis. This study used an exploratory factor analysis with a principal-components analysis and a confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate the factorial validity of the DHL's Apply dimension. Results In the exploratory factor analysis, the KMO and Bartlett's test of spherecity indicated that the DHL items are factorable. With an eigenvalue of 2.98, the extracted factor explained 74.5% of the variance in the four items (Cronbach's alpha = .886). In the confirmatory factor analysis, all of the factor loadings were statistically significant. All of the fit indices showed adequate fit to the data as well. Conclusions Our findings indicated that the Apply dimension showed a good construct validity and internal consistency. The results support the idea that Apply dimension in the DHL scale adequately measures the construct of interest by applying dementia health information to seek and use health care services in dementia care settings.