Alfabetização em Saúde relacionada ao tabagismo: construção, verificação de validade de conteúdo e confiabilidade de um instrumento

Abstract

Tobaccoism is one of the main avoidable causes of sickness and premature death in the world. The habit of smoking is one of the risk factors of morbi-mortality of cardiovascular diseases, many types of cancer and lung diseases. The elevated number of diseases associated to tobaccoism brings important cost to the individual and to the health systems. In this context, tobaccoism has been a rising target of researches in all the world. Knowing the prevalence of the problem, the profile of the smokers and their tobaccoism habits, the motivation to smoke or to quit smoking and detailing of the dependency are some of the focuses of the researchers. The interest in the understanding of the tobaccoism leads researchers to investigate the theme in many ways, including associating it to the Health Alphabetization, due to the fact that is a rising concern of the researchers and health professionals, because of the fast concentration of evidence associated to the Health Alphabetization with measures and outcomes associated to health. Health Alphabetization has to do with personal, cognitive and social abilities that determine the capacity of people to access, understand, evaluate and use information related to health needed to promote and or maintain good health, it also involves individual and systemic determinants, including communication abilities between patient and health professional, cultural aspects, health system complexity, as well as what involves the situation or the context. The evaluation in health, along with Health Alphabetization and Tobaccoism require the use of instruments capable of producing solid results, in a scientifical point of view. The capacity of the instruments is directly related to their quality, in other words, the trusting, validity, responsivity and interpretation of the instrument. The aim of this study was to build and verify the validity of the content and trusting (psychometric properties) of an instrument to evaluate the Health Alphabetization related to tobaccoism. It is a study of methodological nature conducted from January 2015 to August 2016. The steps of instrument building were: establishment of concept structure; definition of aims and involved population; building of items of responsive scales; selection and organization of items; structuring; validity of content and pilot. The developed instrument was denominated the Scale of Health Alphabetization related to Tobaccoism (HAT). The trusting was measured by test-retest and internal consistency of a sample of 62 participants registered in two Family Health Strategy Units. The trusting through test-retest presented substantial indices to almost perfection. Thus, future studies with longitudinal layouts can use HAT to evaluate the levels of Health Alphabetization related to tobaccoism to identify changes in these levels through time and after intervention measures.