Abstract
Objectives: This study was carried out to evaluate the usefulness of a questionnaire created for the purpose of understanding type 2 diabetes patients' perception of their disease based on the relation between patient perception and diabetes control.
Methods: We created a questionnaire based on quantitative data on type 2 diabetes patients acquired from a previous study and carried out a self-administered questionnaire survey targeting type 2 diabetes patients hospitalized at three medical facilities (number of subjects for the analysis: 167). In addition to the items included in the questionnaire draft, we surveyed subjects on items regarding diabetic control; namely, Metabolic control index utilizing HbA1c; QOL index utilizing Problem Areas In Diabetes Survey (PAID); and Chronic invalids self-care behavior index utilizing Self-Care Agency Questionnaire (SCAQ). We applied exploratory factor analysis to determine factor structure. We classified type 2 diabetes patients through cluster analysis based on the factor scores. We conducted comparative analysis on the relationship between classified clusters and diabetic control.
Conclusions and Discussion: We created a questionnaire for the purpose of understanding type 2 diabetes patients' perception of their disease. The questionnaire consisted of 28 items and seven factors. Subjects were classified into three clusters depending on the seven factors of their perceptions of diabetes. In diabetic control, there was no significant relationship between each cluster and HbA1c; however, there were differences in PAID and SCAQ scores among clusters, which indicated the usefulness of the questionnaire created for this study in understanding patients' perception of the disease.
