Health literacy assessment: relexicalising a US test for a South African population

Hunt, Sally; Dowse, Roslind; La Rose, Christopher M

Title: Health literacy assessment: relexicalising a US test for a South African population
Creator: Hunt, Sally
Creator: Dowse, Roslind
Creator: La Rose, Christopher M
Date Issued: 2009
Date: 2009
Type: text
Type: article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/139131
Identifier: vital:37708
Identifier: DOI: 10.2989/SALALS.2008.26.2.7.571
Description: The problems of illiteracy in health contexts have been well documented in the literature and include such serious repercussions as medication non-compliance and failure to seek medical help during the course of an illness. The Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM) is a standardised health literacy test developed in the United States that has been previously administered and researched in South Africa (Lecoko, 2000). It is an objective vocabulary test, designed as a screening instrument to identify the health literacy levels of patients in clinics, which uses item recognition of 66 health-related words. Lecoko found that, in a South African setting, only 8 out of the 66 words in the US-developed test could be deemed acceptable. Therefore, the current study focused on the principled relexicalisation of the REALM, using words gathered from health information and promotional texts in local clinics, hypothesising that this would improve its applicability. After administration to a statistically similar group of respondents, the number of acceptable words on the test increased from eight to 38. Thus it is concluded that principled relexicalisation may be one way of improving the applicability of standardised health literacy tests to local populations and settings. However, the limitations of standardised tests may prove to be a significant barrier overshadowing the value of relexicalisation.
Format: 15 pages
Format: pdf
Language: English
Relation: Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies
Relation: Hunt, S., Dowse, R. and La Rose, C., 2008. Health literacy assessment: relexicalising a US test for a South African population. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 26(2), pp.267-281
Relation: Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies volume 26 number 2 267 281 November 2009 1607-3614
Rights: Publisher
Rights: Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Taylor and Francis Online Terms and Conditions Statement (https://www.tandfonline.com/terms-and-conditions)

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RU Department of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies

Hunt, Sally Ann (Dr)

RU Department of Pharmacy

Dowse, Ros (Emeritus Assoc Prof)

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