Objectives: Men with prostate cancer experience a range of physical, psychosocial and psychosexual effects many of which may be long term. The role of health literacy (i.e. people's cognitive and social ability to understand, access, retrieve and use health information and health services) in how men adapt to prostate cancer is as yet unexplored. We assessed the psychometric robustness of the Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ) among men with prostate cancer to determine which health literacy components are most important to physical and emotional health status.

Methods: A cross‐sectional survey was undertaken with 565 men who were previously treated for prostate cancer and were members of a prostate cancer support network in Queensland (Mage = 71.1, SD = 8.7; Myears since diagnosis = 7.5, SD = 4.7). Measures included the HLQ and the SF‐36. Confirmatory factor analysis was employed to assess the validity of the HLQ in the current prostate cancer sample. The effects of each of the nine health literacy factors on emotional and physical health status were graphed and compared using Fishers exact tests.

Results: RMSEA = 0.069 (CI = 0.066–0.072), item loadings and internal consistency (Chronbach alphas > 0.80) for the nine factor model supported the robustness of the HLQ for use in this prostate cancer sample. Health literacy factors reflecting social and health provider support, navigating health systems, finding and understanding health information and active engagement with providers shared small to moderate associations with emotional health status and little to no association with physical health status.

Conclusions: The HLQ is a robust measure, with stable constructs of health literacy and has utility predicting health‐related outcomes in a sample of men with prostate cancer. Interventions aimed at improving the emotional health status of men with prostate cancer may benefit from incorporating education around interactions with healthcare providers and systems.