Development and Validation of a Diabetes Questionnaire for Middle School Students.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To develop and validate a questionnaire to assess diabetes knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and intent to change among middle school students. DESIGN: A cross-sectional validation analysis. SETTING: Students in 3 urban middle schools in Utah participated in this study. PARTICIPANTS: The 25-item questionnaire was validated in independent samples of 277 and 304 students in the seventh and eighth grades. VARIABLES MEASURED The questionnaire includes the following variables diabetes knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and intent to change dietary and physical activity behaviors. ANALYSIS: Rigorous statistical approaches, including Cronbach's α (goodness of fit) calculation, test-retest reliability, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, were employed to examine the reliability and construct validity. RESULTS: The Cronbach's α coefficients were 0.7 for both subscales demonstrating acceptable internal consistency. All factor loadings were > 0.4, revealing close relations between factors and items. The confirmatory factor analysis model fit was 0.9 for the comparative fit index and Tucker-Lewis Index, indicating a reasonable model-data fit. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS This study demonstrated the validity of a diabetes questionnaire for middle school students. Future work is needed to validate its use in a diabetes prevention program, given the growing need for diabetes education among young adolescents.