Proposal and Validation of a New Literacy Scale in e-health and Social Networks: The E-health Literacy Scale in Social Networks (snHEALS)

Abstract

Health information is a fundamental resource to carry out healthy lifestyles. Web 2.0 has favoured the emergence of multiple online sources of health information. Among them, social networks stand out as a priority information channel for the youngest. An internationalized tool to generally measure digital literacy in self-perceived health has been the e-HEALS scale, which has been transferred and tested in diverse sociocultural and population contexts. The present work aims to adapt the self-administered e-HEALS scale to measure digital literacy in self-perceived health to the scenario of social networks, taking into account its prevalence as an information channel for the youngest people. As a result, the snHEALS is presented, a self-administered scale to measure self-perceived health literacy in social networks. To do this, through a stratified sample of 1004 cases of young people (18-30 years) in Spain, a principal components analysis is first applied; second, a confirmatory factor analysis; and, finally, factorial invariance by sex. The results show that the proposed scale, the snHEALS, is a valid and reliable tool to measure health literacy competence through social networks. From there, it provides solid bases for future research (in other socio technological and population contexts) and practices and detection of needs in the field of public health programs that target the young population.