Objective To select indicators for assessing health literacy among rural residents in China and to provide a basis for developing instruments for health literacy evaluation in the population.
Methods Literature review and expert consultation were used to construct a primary set of indicators for evaluating health literacy among Chinese rural residents in October 2017. Then using Delphi method, we recruited 30 Chinese experts on rural health, environment health, food hygiene, health education, and health promotion for a mail survey to scale the significance, sensitivity, and specificity of all the primary indicators.
Results For the two rounds of consultation, the response rates were higher than 90%; the mean authorities were 0.85; and the harmonious coefficients were 0.322 (P < 0.05). The study finally selected 43 indicators for evaluating four domains of health literacy in Chinese rural residents. The four domains are health awareness and concepts (involving 16 indicators), health knowledge (21), health skills (3), and cognition and application of health information (3).
Conclusion The experts′ response rate, authority and harmony were all good in the study and the selected indicators meet the requirements for the construction of the index system for health literacy evaluation among rural residents in China.
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