Consumer health information needs: A systematic review of instrument development

Highlights：

• A review on the methodological and psychometric quality of both the instruments for consumer health information needs and those for patient needs that contained health information needs sections was conducted;

• A two-phase literature search strategy was applied to retrieve relevant validation studies;

• Overall, both groups of questionnaire instruments were not well developed: only structural validity, internal consistency tests and content validity analysis were performed in about 50 percent of them, while other types of validations were missing in most of them;

• Instruments used for assessing patient needs were found to have better tests of construct validity and handling of floor and ceiling effects;

• Theories and frameworks of information needs can be integrated within the development process to improve the design.