Development and validation of the eHealth literacy scale for college students aged 18-24 years, Faridabad, India

The Internet is commonly used source of health information all over the world. Despite this availability, many people doesn’t have ability to use this health information for their benefit. This ability depends on eHealth literacy’s underlying concept, which is the ability to seek, find, understand, and appraise health information from electronic resources and apply that knowledge in making a health-related decision. There is no studies on eHealth literacy among college students in India who frequently use the internet to access health-related information. The present study was conducted to develop and validate an eHealth literacy scale for college students. The initial phase of the study focuses on developing items from literature review and focus group discussions (FGD) and also on assessing the face and content validity of items through content validity index(CVI). The next three phases focused on design validation, factor analysis, and reliability of newly developed scale among 163 college students. Exploratory factor analysis used to assess construct validity. The internal consistency reliability was measured using Cronbach’s alpha. The tool, which began as a 30-item draft, was gradually reshaped through a series of modifications. A total of 163 participants (81 boys; 82 girls) aged 18 to 24 (mean = 21.21; SD = 1.64) completed the survey. Parallel analysis and exploratory factor analysis supported a five-factor solution (eigenvalues ranging from 2.428 to 1.269), which aligned with our conceptual domains of eHealth Literacy. Retained items demonstrated salient factor loadings (> 0.30). Cronbach’s alpha value of scale came to be 0.75. A 21-item, comprehensive eHealth Literacy scale structured across five distinct factors for college students was developed. The scale demonstrated acceptable overall internal consistency and preliminary evidence of construct validity. Further validation using larger, independent samples is required to confirm the factor structure.