Factor Structure of the Newest Vital Sign In People With HIV and Its Association With Health-Related Self-Management

Introduction: Low health literacy is prevalent in healthy and clinical populations, and plays a role in health behaviors and outcomes. The Newest Vital Sign is as a brief, performance-based test that shows evidence of reliability and validity when used to measure health literacy in English speaking healthy adults and people with HIV (PWH). However, the underlying factor structure of the NVS has been inconsistent across research in different age ranges, countries, and clinical populations. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to confirm the factor structure of the NVS in healthy, English-speaking adults and PWH and examine its association with health-related self-management in PWH. Methods: The study sample consisted of 580 participants that included a healthy, English-speaking group (n = 270) and PWH (n = 310). All participants completed the NVS, Perceived HIV Self-Management Scale (PHIVMS), Beliefs Related to Medication Adherence (BERMA) medication management subscale, and a neurocognitive battery. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test one, two, and three factor models for the items on the NVS. Results: A revised five-item, single factor solution for the NVS best fit the data in both the healthy, English-speaking and PWH samples. A multiple regression predicting health-related self-management from the total score on the NVS and the covariates of education and global cognition was significant (R2 Adjusted = .06, p = .002). However, none of the variables emerged as an independent predictor of health-related self-management (ps > .05). Conclusion: Findings from this study provided evidence of construct validity for the Newest Vital Sign as a measure of health literacy in healthy, English-speaking adults and PWH. The results indicated an association between education, cognition, and scores on the NVS with health-related self-management in PWH. Future research is needed to examine measurement invariance of the NVS along with other psychometric properties (e.g., test-retest reliability) across other clinical populations.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Houston

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Gomez, Elliott Michael

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Woods, Steven P

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Webber, Troy A
• Wheeler, Pariya Fazeli
• Medina, Luis D

• Psychology, Clinical
• Psychology, Psychometrics

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10657/18323

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uh-ir.tdl.org:10657/18323