Improvement in the health of older people and changes in their lifestyles necessitate a scale that can better measure their competence at a higher level. This study describes the development process of the Japan Science and Technology Agency Index of Competence (JST-IC) by (a) refining conceptual definitions and developing preliminary items and (b) examining the basic properties of the items. Participants were 1,253 septuagenarians (539 men and 714 women) living in communities, who were asked to judge whether they were independent via 88 items. To examine the basic properties of the preliminary items, five different analyses were conducted. Thirty-four items were considered as inappropriate (6 overlapped between the analyses): (a) 9 due to very high or low ratios of responders who answered “yes,” (b) 4 due to gender or regional differences, (c) 5 due to their weak association with health status, (d) 9 due to low communalities in factor analysis, and (e) 13 due to redundancy of meaning with other items. Conceptual definitions and preliminary items were developed, and the basic properties of the items were examined to create the JST-IC. The next step would be to screen the remaining 54 items to create the final version of the scale.

Following the accident at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in March 2011, both experts and the national government provided insufficient information on radiation, leading to widespread distrust in the community. This study aimed at clarifying the association between anxiety about radiation and health literacy among residents in evacuation and non-evacuation areas in Fukushima. A questionnaire survey was sent to randomly sampled residents between August and October 2016, and data from 777 responses (38.9% valid response) were analyzed. The questionnaire assessed current radiation anxiety and discrimination and prejudice based on radiation exposure through seven items and communicative and critical health literacy through five items. Multiple regression analysis of the association between radiation anxiety and health literacy showed that the level of health literacy was significantly negatively associated with radiation anxiety in the evacuation areas (marginally in the non-evacuation areas) and marginally negatively associated with discrimination and prejudice in the evacuation areas but not in the non-evacuation areas. Therefore, improving health literacy could alleviate radiation anxiety.