As health literacy (HL) is hypothesized to develop throughout life, enhancement during childhood will improve HL and health during life. There are few valid, age-appropriate tools to assess children’s HL. The German-language European Health Literacy Survey Questionnaire Adapted for Children (HLS-Child-Q15-DE) is a self-report questionnaire adapted from the adult European Health Literacy Survey Questionnaire. This study aims to translate the HLS-Child-Q15 to Dutch and explore the sample’s HL distribution. The HLS-Child-Q15-DE was translated following WHO guidelines and administered digitally to 209 Dutch schoolchildren (eight-to-eleven-year-olds). Its psychometric properties were assessed and the sample’s HL distribution was explored by demographic characteristics. The HLS-Child-Q15-NL had high internal consistency (α = 0.860) and moderate to strong item-total correlations (mean = 0.499). For 6 of the 15 items, >10% of participants answered “do not know”, indicating comprehension problems. Higher HL scores were observed for ten-to-eleven-year-olds (compared with eight-to-nine-year-olds; p = 0.021) and fourth-grade students (compared with third-grade; p = 0.019). This supports the idea that HL evolves throughout life and the importance of schools in this process. With the HLS-Child-Q15-NL, a Dutch measurement instrument of children’s HL is available, although it needs further tailoring to the target group. More research is needed to decrease comprehension problems and to investigate retest reliability and construct validity.

中文翻译：

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在荷兰衡量和探索儿童健康素养：HLS-Child-Q15的翻译和改编

假设健康素养（HL）会在一生中发展，因此在儿童时期提高健康素养将改善HL和一生中的健康。很少有有效的，适合年龄的工具来评估儿童的HL。适用于儿童的德语欧洲健康素养调查问卷（HLS-Child-Q15-DE）是根据成人欧洲健康素养调查问卷改编而成的自我报告调查表。这项研究旨在将HLS-Child-Q15转换为荷兰语，并探索样本的HL分布。HLS-Child-Q15-DE根据WHO指南进行了翻译，并以数字方式管理了209名荷兰学童（8至11岁的孩子）。通过人口统计学特征评估了其心理测量特性并探索了样本的HL分布。HLS-Child-Q15-NL具有很高的内部一致性（α= 0。860）和中度到强项之间的相关性（均值= 0.499）。在15个项目中的6个中，> 10％的参与者回答“不知道”，表明理解力有问题。十至十一岁的儿童观察到较高的HL评分（与八至九岁的儿童相比）；p = 0.021）和四年级学生（三年级；p = 0.019）。这支持了HL在整个生命中不断发展的想法以及学校在此过程中的重要性。使用HLS-Child-Q15-NL，可以使用荷兰的儿童HL测量工具，尽管它需要针对目标人群进行进一步调整。需要进行更多的研究来减少理解问题，并研究重测信度和构建效度。