Background and aims: Successful management of chronic pain includes patients’ active participation, and their adequate health literacy is an important prerequisite. Health literacy can be defined as the ability to obtain, process, and understand health information (i.e. to attain knowledge) and to critically evaluate it to make better health decisions. Health literacy is measured using various generic and condition-specific instruments. The aim was to conduct a scoping review of studies that have included adult patients with chronic pain and to explore what pain-specific instruments were used to assess their chronic pain health literacy. 
Methods: After establishing clear inclusion and exclusion criteria, 8 electronic databases were searched for relevant studies. Of the 56 identified studies, two were included for data abstraction.
Results: Each study used a different pain instrument that assessed chronic pain health literacy; both focused on knowledge concerning chronic pain. One instrument, the Low Back Pain Knowledge Questionnaire, contains 12 multiple-choice questions concerning symptoms, causes, and the management of low back pain. The second instrument is a true/false test that addresses knowledge concerning six chronic conditions with a 4-item subscale on chronic pain and that addresses prevention, warning signs, diagnostics, and management. 
Conclusions: There is a paucity of pain-specific instruments that assess chronic pain health literacy. Furthermore, they focus on only a narrow aspect of health literacy: knowledge. Such instruments do not measure patients’ ability to critically evaluate health information that would guide their decisions concerning the management of their pain. Further research in this area is recommended.

ASSESSING CHRONIC PAIN HEALTH LITERACY: A SCOPING REVIEW OF PAIN-SPECIFIC INSTRUMENTS