Assessing helpful and harmful family and friend involvement in adults’ type 2 diabetes self-management

Abstract

Objective: Develop and evaluate a measure assessing helpful and harmful family/friends’ involvement in adults’ type 2 diabetes (T2D) self-management.Methods: Prior mixed-methods research, cognitive interviews, and expert input informed measure development. We administered the measure in two studies (N = 392 and N = 512) to evaluate its factor structure, internal consistency reliability, test-retest reliability, and construct, criterion and predictive validity.Results: Analyses supported a two-factor solution: helpful and harmful involvement with internal consistency reliability α = .86 and .72, respectively. Three-month test-retest reliability was rho = 0.64 for helpful and rho = 0.61 for harmful (both p < 0.001). Over 90% reported at least one instance of family/friend involvement in the past month. Associations with other measures of diabetes involvement were as anticipated (all p < .01). Helpful and harmful involvement were independently associated with diabetes self-efficacy, diet, blood glucose testing and medication adherence cross-sectionally [βs 0.13–0.39 helpful, −0.12–−0.33 harmful; all p < .05]. Harmful involvement independently predicted worse HbA1c (β = 0.08), and worsening HbA1c over three months (β = 0.12, both p < 0.05).Conclusion: The Family and Friend Involvement in Adults’ Diabetes (FIAD) is a reliable and valid measure assessing family/friend involvement in adults’ T2D.Practice implications: FIAD use can inform interventions to improve social contexts in which adults manage diabetes.