Factors Associated with Self-Management in Adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes

Diabetes is one of the most common chronic diseases that is also highlyprevalent among adolescents. The present study was conducted to determine therelationship between demographic characteristics and self-management in adolescentswith type 1 diabetes. This descriptive-analytical study was conducted on 426 adolescents withtype 1 diabetes aged 13 to 18, and diagnosed for at least one year. The research toolsincluded a demographic information form covering the patients’ personal, family,and health details, and the Self-Management of type 1 Diabetes in Adolescence(SMOD-A) with five subscales of collaboration with parents, diabetes care activities,diabetes problem-solving, diabetes communication, and diabetes goals. The contentvalidity of the measure was then evaluated by a group of experts and found to beacceptable (SCVI = 98%). In the assessment of the measure›s reliability, the intraclasscorrelation showed an overall Cronbach’s alpha of 0.88. The test-retest showed aconsistency of 0.73 for the measure. The results obtained showed that the presence of another diabetic memberin the family leads to higher levels of self-management in some dimensions, includingproblem-solving, communication, and goals, yet to lower levels in some others,including collaboration with parents and diabetes care activities. A direct relationshipwas observed between the duration of time since the diagnosis and the scores obtainedby the adolescents. An inverse relationship was observed between the type of physicianin charge and the scores obtained in the subscales of collaboration with parents,problem-solving, communication, and goals. The scores obtained were directly relatedto having a school health record and having access to diabetic care tools at school.Family income was found to be directly related to diabetes care activities and inverselyto problem-solving, communication and goals. P of ≤ 0.05 was considered significantfor all relationships. Self-management was found to be moderate to good among Iranianadolescents with type 1 diabetes; however, it could be further improved with thesupport of both families and medical teams involved.