Being an Informed Consumer of Health Information and Assessment of Electronic Health Literacy in a National Sample of Internet Users: Validity and Reliability of the e-HLS Instrument.

Background: The Internet, with its capacity to provide information that transcends time and space barriers, continues to transform how people find and apply information to their own lives. With the current explosion in electronic sources of health information, including thousands of websites and hundreds of mobile phone health apps, electronic health literacy is gaining an increasing prominence in health and medical research. An important dimension of electronic health literacy is the ability to appraise the quality of information that will facilitate everyday health care decisions.