Measuring Health Literacy in General Populations: Primary Findings from the HLS-EU Consortium's Health Literacy Assessment Effort.

This chapter is concerned with the difference of measuring health literacy of general population for purposes of public health as differentiated from measuring personal health literacy of individuals within health care services. The evolution of concept, measurement and empirical research of health literacy in the last decades is discussed, and the position of measuring comprehensive health literacy in general populations, especially by the European Health Literacy Survey (HLS-EU) study, is defined. Main features of the HLS-EU conceptual and logic model, definition, instruments and study design are described.