Journal of Child and Adolescent Behavior
Open Access

Research Article

A Psychometric Assessment of the Newest Vital Sign among Youth in Guatemala City

¹University of Texas at San Antonio Department of Social Work; 501 W. Cesar E. Chavez Blvd, San Antonio, TX 78207, USA

²Arizona State University School of Social Work; Phoenix, AZ, USA

³University of Nebraska-Lincoln Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders; Lincoln, NE, USA

⁴Executive Director, U Yum Cap ONG, Guatemala City, Guatemala

*Corresponding Author:

Steven Hoffman
University of Texas at San Antonio
Department of Social Work; 501 W. Cesar
E. Chavez Blvd, San Antonio, TX 78207, USA
Tel: 210-458-2922
Fax: 210-458-3001
E-mail: steven.hoffman@utsa.edu

Received Date: January 19, 2015, Accepted Date: February 23, 2015, Published Date: February 27, 2015

Citation: Hoffman S, Marsiglia FF, Lambert MC, Porta M (2015) A Psychometric Assessment of the Newest Vital Sign among Youth in Guatemala City. J Child Adolesc Behav 3:190. doi:10.4172/2375-4494.1000190

Copyright: © 2015 Hoffman S, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Background and Objective: Psychometrically sound health literacy assessments are widely available in the US for both adults and youth. However, among international youth populations there is a dearth of reliable instruments. This study was undertaken in order to assess the psychometric viability of using the Spanish version of the Newest Vital Sign (NVS; previously validated in the US) among a sample of youth living in Guatemala City. Methods: Analysis is based on 230 youth who were attending various schools within Guatemala City, Guatemala. Rasch modeling was used to estimate item difficulty and discrimination parameters, item fit indices, item-total correlations, and differential item functioning between male and female youth. Results: The majority of the items on the NVS exhibit acceptable properties. The last item demonstrated statistically significant DIF of a practically important magnitude (DIF > |0.43|) suggesting that females are more likely than males to answer the item correctly after controlling for the ‘amount’ of health literacy that the students possess. Conclusion: Those using the NVS among international Spanish-speaking youth populations should be aware that the NVS appears to be appropriate to use in Latin America. Females may tend to have slightly higher scores than males. Additional psychometric testing of the instrument among similar cross-national samples of youth is needed.

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