Peer-reviewed article
การพฒนาเครองมอวดความรอบรดานการดแลสขภาพเดกของผดแล
Phatphitcha Kruthangka, Duangkamon Traiwichitkhun, Suwimon Wongwanich ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study developed and validated a questionnaire to measure child healthcare literacy among caregivers working in nurseries in Thailand. The instrument was tested with 345 caregivers and found to have strong reliability. The research identified two main components of caregiver child healthcare literacy: health literacy (including information-seeking, knowledge, communication, and decision-making) and nurturing care (including nutrition, responsive caregiving, safety, and early learning opportunities). The questionnaire showed good fit with empirical data and could be used to identify caregiver strengths and weaknesses to support child development.
Key points
- Caregivers' child healthcare literacy has two main components: health literacy and nurturing care
- Health literacy includes accessing information and services, health knowledge, communication skills, self-management, decision-making, and media literacy
- Nurturing care consists of good health, adequate nutrition, responsive caregiving, security and safety, and opportunities for early learning
- The questionnaire showed high reliability (omega coefficient = .976) and good model fit to empirical data
- The instrument can identify caregiver strengths and weaknesses to design quality support systems in child development centers
Limitations
This study only describes the development and validation of a measurement instrument; it does not evaluate whether the caregivers identified as having low healthcare literacy can improve outcomes for children through targeted interventions. The study was conducted only in Thailand with nursery-based caregivers, limiting generalisability to other contexts and caregiver types.
Abstract
To take care of children to have well-being including physical, psychological, social, emotional, and intellectual health. Caregivers must have child healthcare literacy, be able to seek information, and apply the knowledge of child health care to promote the well-being of children. The purposes of this survey study were 1) to analyze components of caregivers’ child healthcare literacy and 2) to develop and validate the quality of the instrument for caregivers’ child healthcare literacy with empirical data. Samples were 345 child caregivers who worked in nurseries. Data was collected by using a caregivers’ child healthcare literacy questionnaire. The reliability of the questionnaire was tested by the omega coefficient yielding a value of .976. The confirmation factor analysis was performed by using the Mplus program to analyze the data. The research results and confirmatory factor analysis revealed that caregivers’ child healthcare literacy consisted of two main components: 1) Health literacy, which included accessing information and service, health knowledge and understanding, communication skill, self-management skill, decision skill, and media literacy; and 2) Nurturing care, which consisted of good health, adequate nutrition, responsive caregiving, security and safety, and opportunities for early learning. The caregivers’ child healthcare literacy components were fit to the empirical data (2 (343, N = 345) = 446.23, p = .0001, CFI = .979, TLI = .974, SRMR = .051, RMSEA = .030, AIC = 14556.473, BIC = 15140.692, 2 /df = 1.30). The standard weights of each main health literacy factor were between .552 and .955, and each main nurturing care factor was between .446 and .971. The results of this research confirmed that the questionnaire could be utilized to assess caregivers’ child healthcare literacy, which indicates caregiver strengths and weaknesses, leading to the designing of a quality system supporting caregivers for child development centers in the future.