Digital Health Literacy Scale (eHEALS) and the assessment of digital health literacy in older adults: An integrative review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62827/gb.v1i1.0009Keywords:
Aged; Computer Literacy; Health; Evaluation of Research Programs and Tools.Abstract
Introduction: Digital health literacy is a relevant concept, representing a person's ability to analyze, understand, and apply health-related topics to themselves and their community. Being health literate, or having eHealth literacy, in an electronic world requires a different or at least expanded set of skills to engage in health care and health promotion. Objective: Recent scientific literature on the use of instruments to assess digital literacy in health among older adults was analyzed, answering the question: “What is the contribution of the eHEALS scale in assessing digital literacy in health among older adults?” Methods: definition of the research question, establishment of inclusion and exclusion criteria, definition of descriptors, database search, selection of studies for review, information extraction, interpretation of results, and presentation of the integrative review. The search for articles considered the following keywords and descriptors, indexed in the Health Sciences Descriptors (DeCS) and Medical Subject Headings (MeSH): elderly; elderly aged 80 years or older; information literacy; digital literacy; health literacy; and health, combined with Boolean operators (AND and OR). Results: Six articles were found, one of which used a semi-structured questionnaire to assess digital health literacy in older adults, while the other five articles used the eHEALS or its modified version. Conclusion: There are few specific, objective, and validated instruments to assess digital health literacy in older adults eHEALS is currently the only tool available for this purpose.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Raissa Luisa Batista, Maria das Graças Wanderley de Sales Coriolano, Carla Cabral dos Santos Accioly Lins, Renata Muniz Freire Vinhal Siqueira Jardim, Joana Alves da Mata Ribeiro (Autor)
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