Abstract
Children’s health attitudes and whether they are able to exert control over their chronic illness is related to disease management. For the current study, we assessed illness representations, general attitude toward having diabetes and health locus of control for 65 children with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) and how these were related to parent report of child HbA1c levels. Results of our regression model indicated that internal locus of control moderated the relationship between illness attitude and HbA1c levels. Specifically, children with a high internal locus of control had lower (better) HbA1c levels. Additionally, children with a low internal locus of control for their diabetes and positive attitudes demonstrated lower HbA1c levels, whereas children with a low internal locus of control and negative attitudes had higher HbA1c levels. The generalizability of study findings is limited because the sample was mostly Caucasian youth reporting a fairly high locus of control. Future research is needed to determine whether changes in children’s perceptions of control over illness correspond to long-term improvements in health outcomes.
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Notes
Correlations among variables are available from the third author.
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Acknowledgements
Special thanks are extended to Dr. T. Andreone and the American Diabetes Association in Cincinnati and Stephanie Smith for their support of this project.
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Appendix
Appendix
Revised CATIS Items (Lehmkuhl and Nabors 2008):
(1) How good or bad do you feel it is to have diabetes? (2) How often do you feel that your diabetes keeps you from doing new things? (3) How often do you feel different from others because of your diabetes? (4) How often do you feel bad because of you have diabetes? (5) How often do you feel sad about having diabetes? (6) How often do you feel happy even though you have diabetes? and (7) How often do you feel just as good as other kids your age even though you have diabetes?
The questions we used from Parcel and Meyer’s scale are below (we substituted the word diabetes for the word health):
(1) Good health comes from being lucky; (2) I can do many things to fight my diabetes; (3) People who don’t have trouble managing their diabetes are just plain lucky; (4) I can make many choices about my diabetes; (5) I can do lots of things to prevent my diabetes from getting worse; and (6) Bad luck makes people’s diabetes get worse.
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Nabors, L., McGrady, M.E. & Kichler, J. Children’s Attitudes Toward Their Diabetes, Locus of Control, and HbA1c Levels. J Dev Phys Disabil 22, 475–484 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10882-009-9183-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10882-009-9183-3