A Psychometric Assessment of the Newest Vital Sign among Youth in Guatemala City
Keywords
Health literacy; Newest vital sign; Youth; Psychometrics; Health; Adolescence; Guatemala City
Abstract
Background and Objective: Psychometrically sound health literacy assessments are widely available in the US for both adults and youth. However, among international youth populations there is a dearth of reliable instruments. This study was undertaken in order to assess the psychometric viability of using the Spanish version of the Newest Vital Sign (NVS; previously validated in the US) among a sample of youth living in Guatemala City. Methods: Analysis is based on 230 youth who were attending various schools within Guatemala City, Guatemala. Rasch modeling was used to estimate item difficulty and discrimination parameters, item fit indices, item-total correlations, and differential item functioning between male and female youth. Results: The majority of the items on the NVS exhibit acceptable properties. The last item demonstrated statistically significant DIF of a practically important magnitude (DIF > |0.43|) suggesting that females are more likely than males to answer the item correctly after controlling for the ‘amount’ of health literacy that the students possess. Conclusion: Those using the NVS among international Spanish-speaking youth populations should be aware that the NVS appears to be appropriate to use in Latin America. Females may tend to have slightly higher scores than males. Additional psychometric testing of the instrument among similar cross-national samples of youth is needed.
Original Publication Citation
Hoffman, S., Marsiglia, F. F., Lambert, M. C., & Porta, M. (2015). A psychometric assessment of the Newest Vital Sign among youth in Guatemala City. Journal of Child and Adolescent Behavior, 3, 190-194. doi: 10.4172/2375-4494.1000190
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Hoffman, Steven; Marsiglia, Flavio F.; Lambert, Matthew C.; and Porta, Maria, "A Psychometric Assessment of the Newest Vital Sign among Youth in Guatemala City" (2015). Faculty Publications. 2946.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/facpub/2946
Document Type
Peer-Reviewed Article
Publication Date
2015-02-27
Permanent URL
http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/5760
Publisher
Journal of Child & Adolescent Behavior
Language
English
College
Family, Home, and Social Sciences
Department
Social Work
Copyright Status
© 2015 Hoffman S, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.