Instruments validated in Brazil for assessing oral health literacy in adolescents: an integrative literature review

Abstract

Adolescence is a stage of life where there are major physical and biological transformations concomitant with psychological and social ones, which occur with the development of sexuality and which influence the human being's personality and other aspects of life. Health literacy (HL) can be understood as an individual's ability to access, understand, evaluate and put into practice basic health information. Adolescent oral health literacy (OHL) is an area that is little explored, despite the importance of this formative stage in the individual approach to healthy lifestyles and behaviors. The objective of this study was to carry out an integrative literature review on research instruments validated in Brazil for OHL among adolescents. The search strategy was carried out in August 2023, with a broad search for studies that assessed OHL in adolescents, in the Virtual Health Library (VHL), US National Library of Medicine (PubMed) and Scientific Electronic databases. Library Online (Scielo). The keywords used were “health literacy” and “oral health” and “adolescents”. Inclusion criteria: free full texts; only: articles, books and documents, clinical trials, meta-analyses, controlled and randomized trials, analyzes and systematic reviews; without limitations of date or language. Exclusion criteria: studies without the three descriptors present in the text simultaneously, theses and monographs, abstracts, letters to the editor. 47 articles were found in VHL, 118 in PubMed and 13 in Scielo. Nineteen articles were analyzed and presented according to: author, title, year of publication, type of study, objectives, sample size and age group, sample recruitment, data collection tool, limitations and health outcomes. The only research instrument on adolescent OHL validated in Brazil was the BREALD-30 questionnaire, a Brazilian version of the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Dentistry, which measures literacy through word recognition. An important research gap in this field was revealed.