Abstract:

Introduction:  The eHEALS is an 8-item measure of eHealth literacy developed to measure consumers’ combined knowledge, comfort, and perceived skills at finding, evaluating, and applying electronic health information to health problems. The current study aims to measure validity and reliability of the Iranian version of eHEALS questionnaire in a population context.

Materials & Methods: A cross-sectional study was done on 525 youths people who has been chosen randomly in Iran, Yazd. We determined content validity, construct validity and predictive validity of the translated questionnaire. Principal components factor analysis was used to determine the theoretical fit of the measures with the data. The internal consistency of the translated questionnaire was evaluated using Cronbach α coefficient. The results were analyzed in SPSSv16.

Results: The principal component analysis (PCA) produced a single factor solution (70.48% of variance) with factor loading ranging from 0.723 to 0.862. The internal consistency of the scale was sufficient (alpha=0.88 , P<0.001) and the test-retest coefficients for the items were reliable (r= 0.96, P<0.001).

Discussion: The results of the study showed that the items in the translated questionnaire were equivalent to the original scale .The version of the eHEALS questionnaire showed both good reliability and validity for the screening of eHealth literacy of Iranian people.