Effects of Messaging Framing on the Self-Management Activities and Self-Efficacies of Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Message framing is a low-cost and effective intervention method to improve diabetics’ health behaviors. The study aimed to investigate the impacts of positive and negative message framing interventions on the self-management activities and self-efficacy of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).

Overall, 102 T2DM patients from Jinhua People’s Hospital of China were recruited and divided into three groups: positive and negative message framing intervention groups and a control group. A 12-week experiment was implemented on the first two groups. Then, the differences of the patients’ self-management activities and self-efficacies were analyzed between the experimental and control groups. Finally, the mediating effect of self-efficacy between two types of message framing interventions and patients’ self-management activities was investigated.

Both positive and negative message framing interventions could significantly improve the T2DM patients’ self-management activities in diet, blood glucose testing, foot care, and medication taking (P<0.05), meanwhile significantly improving their self-efficacies along the nutrition, physical exercise and weight, medical treatment, blood sugar, and feet check (P<0.05). Results of the difference analysis for both within-group and inter-group showed that, compared with the positive messaging framing intervention, the negative one had more significant effects on enhancing the patients’ self-management activities and self-efficacy. Self-efficacy had only a mediating effect between negative messaging framing intervention and self-management activities (β = 0.94, 95% CI: 0.0934 – 0.456).

Negative messaging framing intervention could better enrich T2DM patients’ diabetes knowledge through offering threatening information, thereby enhancing their self-efficacies, and ultimately improve their self-management activities.