Development and psychometric evaluation of future physicians' approach to health literacy scale (F-PATHS)

Objective: Health literacy (HL) practices are a key element of effective communication between patients and healthcare professionals, enabling the delivery of better quality patient-centered care. The main purpose of this study is to develop a set of scales within the scope of an Erasmus + European Union Project in order to evaluate the knowledge and attitudes of clinical period students of the national partners about HL. Subsequently, the validity and reliability analyses of the set of scales (Future Physicians’ Approach to HL Scale, F-PATHS) are presented. Methods: A total of 39 statements, to be analyzed for validity and reliability, were delivered to the participants by the convenience sampling method as a component of an online data collection form with a total of 62 questions prepared through Google Forms. Then, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was applied to evaluate the construct validity. Principal component analysis and the “direct oblimin” rotation method were used in EFA. The reliability was calculated with Cronbach’s Alpha and the item-total score correlation. Results: Considering the factor loadings and theoretical framework, items 3, 4 and 26 were removed from the scale set. The total variance explained percentage of the final scale set was 63.96% and the number of factors was 7. The KMO value was 0.913, and the Bartlett test was statistically significant (p<0.001). Considering the theoretical structure and Likert format of the scale set, it was determined that it measured different characteristics and could be evaluated independently as three separate scales. According to the KMO value and Bartlett’s test, the data were suitable for factor analysis for all three scales and the factor structure was regular. Cronbach's Alpha values of the scales are 0.862, 0.858, and 0.909, respectively. Conclusion: F-PATHS appears to be valid in terms of EFA and reliable for determining the approaches of faculty of medicine clinical term students regarding the HL of the society.