Objective To develop a questionnaire for assessing bone health literacy among perimenopausal and postmenopausal women, then evaluate its reliability and validity, and to provide scientific evidence for the application of the questionnaire in the middle-aged and elderly. Methods A theoretical framework was developed based on the integrated theoretical model of health literacy proposed by Regional Office for Europe of WHO in 2012. Based on the relevant research on bone health at home and abroad, and through two rounds of expert consultation, a bone health literacy questionnaire was formed. The community women aged 45-65 years were investigated in 7 urban and suburban districts of Shanghai. Cronbach’s α and split-half reliability were calculated to evaluate the reliability of bone health literacy questionnaire; content, discriminant, convergent and structural validity were performed to measure the validity of the questionnaire. Results A forty-item bone health literacy questionnaire for perimenopausal and postmenopausal women was finalized through expert meetings. A total of 447 women aged 45-65 years from community were investigated for the evaluation. The overall Cronbach's α of the bone health literacy questionnaire was 0.763 and the split-half reliability was 0.793. The correlation coefficient of each sub-questionnaire with the total questionnaire was 0.403-0.703. The bone health literacy questionnaire had good content validity, with the success rate of calibration experiment of 57.50% and 86.25% respectively. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the goodness of fit index (GFI) and other indicators reached the adaptation standard, and the structural validity was good. Conclusion The questionnaire has good reliability and validity, and can be used as a simple tool to measure and evaluate bone health literacy among middle-aged and elderly women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]