Measuring Digital Health Literacy, Why and how?

Digital health literacy or eHealth Literacy refers to a person’s ability to search, select, appraise and apply online health information or appropriately use digital health applications. In this presentation I will address the issue of measurement of these skills. First, we will explore why it is important to measure digital health literacy and discuss the different aims of measuring. Second, we will address some of the currently available instruments, including the oldest and most used instrument, the eHealth Literacy Scale or EHEALS Norman & Skinner, 2006 and some more recent instruments, including the eHealth Literacy Questionnaire, eHLQ Kayser et al. 2018 and the Digital Health Literacy Instrument, DHLI. Van der Vaart & Drossaert, 2017. Of each instrument, I will briefly discuss its underlying theory, some empirical findings, and its strengths and weaknesses. I will conclude with discussing some general challenges in measuring digital health literacy and directions for future research.