Health Literacy Assessment Tool related to Antenatal Care (HLAT-ANC) for pregnant women: a Methodological Research from Turkey

Objectives: It is important to provide adequate antenatal care (ANC) for the lowest maternal-fetal complications in pregnancy. The increase in the level of health literacy increases the quality of the ANC, compliance with the follow-up.To develop a tool to evaluate health literacy (HL) levels of pregnant women in antenatal care (ANC). Method: This study is methodological research conducted between 15.02.2016-01.07.2018. "Health Literacy Assessment Tool related to Antenatal Care (HLAT-ANC)" was developed. Its validity-reliability was tested by item analysis, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), concurrent criterion validity, intergroup dissociation, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and determination of the Kuder-Richardson-20 (KR-20) coefficient. Results: The discrimination coefficients of the items in HLAT-ANC varied between 0.20-0.57 and factor loads between 0.34-0.85. It was determined that HLAT-ANC has KR-20≥0.85 in each subdomain. The scores of fit criteria obtained in the confirmatory factor analysis were within acceptable limits. Conclusion: HLAT-ANC was found to be a valid and reliable scale.