Patients with heart failure suffer from poor health outcomes due to multiple co-morbidity requiring multiple medications. Patients who misunderstand their diagnosis and treatment plan may use their medication sub-optimally. Providing knowledge through education is one mechanism that can help patients improve medication compliance. OBJECTIVES: To develop and establish measurement properties of two distinct instruments that can be used in patients with heart failure (HF) to measure acceptability of educational materials and subsequent knowledge gained following an educational intervention. METHODS: Using an expert panel, we developed minimal criteria required to educate patients with HF. Subsequently, we developed and tested two questionnaires. The first measure, which we refer to as a measure of educational material acceptability (EMA) was developed to help us differentiate between booklets designed to educate patients with HF so as to select which booklets were most acceptable to the patient. The second measure, which we refer to as the measure of knowledge acquisition (MKA), was developed to help us evaluate the impact of our educational intervention on knowledge. MKA questionnaires were administered pre- and post-intervention to 126 heart failure patients within a randomized controlled trial at a university-affiliated teaching center with a referral base of HF patients. RESULTS: The internal consistency of the EMA was 0.79 (Cronbach's alpha). The internal consistency of the MKA was 0.61 and the responsiveness was 0.75. CONCLUSIONS: The availability of instruments such as those we have developed, can assist heart-failure programs evaluate the impact of their educational interventions on knowledge gained which will hopefully translate into better patient outcomes.