Questionnaire assesses diabetes-related qol
De Wit M, Winterdijk P, Aanstoot HJ, Anderson B, Danne T, Deeb L, Lange K, Nielsen AØ, Skovlund S, Peyrot M, Snoek F; DAWN Youth Advisory Board.
Assessing diabetes-related quality of life in youth with type 1 diabetes in routine clinical care: the MIND Youth Questionnaire (MY-Q). Pediatr Diabetes. 2012;13:638-46.
Finding out the extent to which diabetes is affecting quality of life (QoL) of youth with type 1 diabetes is an important step towards optimizing care. Diabeter staff took a key role in developing the Monitoring Individual Needs in Diabetes (MIND) Youth Questionnaire (MY-Q) – a multi-dimensional self-report health-related QoL instrument, and the first to be especially designed for use in pediatric diabetes care.
This report describes the development, evaluation, and validation of the 36-item MY-Q, which consist of seven subscales: social impact, diabetes control perceptions, responsibility, worries, treatment satisfaction, and body image and eating behavior. The questionnaire also evaluates general health-related QoL and emotional well-being.
The evaluation of My-Q was based on interviews with 22 teenagers, plus an additional 84 teenagers with type 1 diabetes who also completed the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL) modules (general and diabetes-related).
Key findings:
- Overall, Cronbach’s alpha – a measure of reliability on a scale of 0-1 – for MY-Q was 0.80.
- There were also strong correlations between the total MY-Q score and the PedsQL general and diabetes-related scores, confirming the validity of the new score.
- Higher HbA1c, signifying poorer control, was significantly associated with lower diabetes control perceptions, worries, and body image and eating behavior scores.
- Younger age was significantly associated with higher diabetes control perceptions and body image and eating behavior scores, and with lower responsibility scores.
Concluding, the authors state the new questionnaire
"has acceptable measurement properties and seems suitable for implementation in routine care of teenagers with diabetes" -
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