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Abstract

Introduction: The Three-question Health Literacy screener (THLSQ) allows to screen health literacy (HL) aiming to adapt it culturally and validate it for European Portuguese.
Methods: Ethical authorization and author´s permission, translation and back translation, verification of reliability and readability of THLSQ, 3 questions to answer on an ordinal scale between 1 and 5, 5 being the best answer, allowing summation. Convergent validation with quality of life, socio-economic level, gender, presence of mul- timorbidity and polypharmacotherapy and self-perception of Health Literacy in social conversation networks and face-to-face.
Results: it was verified in the adaptation high readability for low ages and reliability. In a sample of n = 297, the internal consistency was 0.707, Cronbach's Alpha, 0.565 to 0.833 if item eliminated. The sum of THLSQ was significantly higher in social netwoks application, p = 0.024 and correlated significantly with socio-economic level, r=+ 0.393, p =<0.001, age, r=-0.369, p <0.001, and "What do you think your level of Health Literacy is" r=0.359, p =<0.001. Significant differences, better in those who did not report multimorbidity, p =0.001, being in Good QoL, p <0.001, and not having polipharmacotherapy, p <0.001, were also found.
Conclusion: The cultural adaptation and validation of the TQHLS was possible.