OBJECTIVETo establish a comprehensive evaluation indicator system for healthy literacy based on national survey data.

METHODA multi-stage stratified sampling method was carried out to select the sample population in six provinces of China, which were adults aged 18 - 69 years old. The national health literacy questionnaire was used to investigate the sample populations. The answers were scored according to the error answer of 0, uncertain answer of 1 and the correct answer of 2. The degrees of difficulty and difference were calculated and be used to screen the indicators from the questionnaire as to establishing the comprehensive evaluation indicator system of the health literacy. The Cronbach alpha coefficient, correlation analysis, regression analysis and cluster analysis methods were used to assess the reliability and validity of the indicator system.

RESULTSThe samples were 11 759 people, the valid questionnaires were 11 693 and the effective recovery rate was 99.4%, the Myer' index of sample was 4.92. There were 40 indexes selected to establish the comprehensive evaluation indicator system of health literacy. The correlation coefficient between indicator system and the questionnaire scores was 0.948 (P < 0.01), there were the significant differences between groups of being clustered by Q cluster analysis method (P < 0.01). The VIF of these four dimensions was less than 5.

CONCLUSIONIn this study, the comprehensive evaluation indicator system had a good reliability and validity, and there existed no collinearity among four dimensions of indicator system, it should be the foundation for developing comprehensive evaluation index of health literacy.