Adaptation of Oral and Dental Health Literacy Scale Short Form to Turkish Language

Aim: The aim of the study is to adapt the "Health Literacy Dental Scale-Short Form (HeLD-14)" scale to Turkish language and to prepare a valid and reliable scale to evaluate oral and dental health literacy in adults. Method: It is a methodological research. After the psycholinguistic evaluations, 500 participants were reached among the individuals who applied to primary, secondary and tertiary health institutions in order to ensure the variation of the target group by using the purposeful sampling method among improbable sampling methods. Structural equation modeling was used in validity and reliability analysis. Language, appearance, criterion, construct validity, convergent and divergent validity, internal consistency, parallel form, test-retest and split-half reliability were evaluated. In terms of language validity, 30 participants were reached, 50 participants were reached for retest, and TSOY-32 scale was used as a parallel form. Results: When the scale questions were evaluated with KMO and Barlett tests, it was seen that the sample size and data content were suitable for factor analysis. In the factor analysis, a four-factor structure that explains 71.21% of the total variance was obtained. In the confirmatory factor analysis, it was found that the model fit indexes of the four-factor structure consisting of 12 items showed acceptable fit by removing two items in line with the modification indexes. The total score obtained from the scale showed a moderate positive correlation with the general index score obtained from the TSOY-32 scale (r = 0.687). The Cronbach alpha coefficient of the ADSOY scale was found to be 0.910 in EFA and 0.860 in the model accepted after CFA. Test-retest result was found to have an in-class reliability coefficient of 0.885, and the correlation with the HeLD-14 scale in language validity assessment was found to be positively very strong. (r = 0.774). Conclusion: The validity and reliability analyzes of the HeLD-14 scale, which was adapted to evaluate oral and dental literacy in Turkish, were found to be within acceptable limits. It was observed that the high scores obtained showed a better oral and dental health literacy.