Adaptation and validation of the Chinese Health Literacy Scale for Low Salt Consumption—Hong Kong (CHLSalt-HK) for Malaysian Population

High consumption of sodium is often associated with an increased risk of hypertension, heart disease, and premature death. Thus, it is vital to have comprehensive data on knowledge, practices, and health literacy levels pertaining to sodium intake for strategized and informed public health initiatives. This study aims to adapt and validate the Chinese Health Literacy Scale for Low Salt Consumption – Hong Kong population (CHLSalt-HK) instrument to be used as assessment tool on health literacy pertaining to salt intake among Malaysian adults and this paper reports the translation and validation process of the instrument. The original CHLSalt-HK in English was translated to Malay by using forward-backward translation, and the preliminary version was obtained with cross-cultural adaptation based on review by three technical experts. A cognitive testing was conducted among 30 patients based on sociodemographic differences such as ethnicity, location, and education level. Their feedback was gained pertaining to comprehension of the instrument in terms of language and terminologies used, the flow and clarity of the instructions, and the questions given. The improvised version of the instrument was then pre-tested among 200 adults’ respondents in Klang Valley for the reliability purposes. The internal consistency of the instrument was acceptable, with Cronbach’s alpha values ranging between 0.624 and 0.830 and 0.825 for the entire instrument. The temporal stability was good, and the intraclass correlation coefficient was >0.6. The adapted and translated version CHLSalt-HK demonstrates adequate psychometric properties for measuring health literacy pertaining to salt intake among Malaysian populations.