ALSATION Study Protocol: Romanian Translation of Three Health Literacy Surveys

Abstract

Access to the internet and online resources changes the concept of health and increases people's autonomy. In this context, Health Literacy (HL) is a critical determinant of health-related choices. At World Health Organization (WHO) level, M-POHL (Action Network on Measuring Population and Organizational Health Literacy of WHO-Europe) created and validated on European population four questionnaires: digital HL (HLS19-DIGI), communication HL (with doctors from health care services - HLS19-COM-P-Q11 long version and HLS19-COM-P-Q6 short version), online navigation HL (HLS19-NAV), and vaccination HL (HLS19-VAC). Based on the expertise of the team, the present study aimed to report the study protocol for Romanian translation, culturally adapting and psychometric testing the following three M-POHL health literacy tools: HLS19-DIGI, HLS19-NAV, and HLS19-COM-P-Q11, HLS19-COM-P-Q6. We will conduct a qualitative descriptive study design in seven steps to translate and adapt the HLS19-DIGI, HLS19-NAV, and HLS19-COM-P-Q11, HLS19-COM-P-Q6 to the Romanian speakers. The study will begin with the translation of English (En)-Romanian (Ro) (2 researchers involved) (step 1), followed by the evaluation of the translation by a bilingual researcher independent of the two researchers who did the En-Ro translation (step 2), the translation of Ro-En (2 researchers but not those in step 1; step 3), the evaluation of the translation by a bilingual researcher independent of the two researchers who did the Ro-En translation (step 4), evaluation of the translation of the tool in an expert group (step 5), pilot testing on a sample of the target population (step 6) and full psychometric testing of the version resulting from step 6 (step 7).

Keywords: Health literacy (HL); Survey; Translation; Validation.