Development and validation of The Personal Diabetes Questionnaire (PDQ): a measure of diabetes self-care behaviors, perceptions and barriers.

AIM: To develop and evaluate the validity and reliability of The Personal Diabetes Questionnaire (PDQ), a brief, yet comprehensive measure of diabetes self-care behaviors, perceptions and barriers. To examine individual items to provide descriptive and normative information and provide data on scale reliability and associations between PDQ scales and concurrently assessed HBA(1c) and BMI.
METHOD: Items were written to address nutritional management, medication utilization, blood glucose monitoring, and physical activity. The initial instrument was reviewed by multidisciplinary diabetes care providers and items subsequently revised until the measure provided complete coverage of the diabetes care domains using as few items as possible. The scoring scheme was generated rationally. Subjects were 790 adults (205 with type 1 and 585 with type 2 diabetes) who completed the PDQ while waiting for clinic appointments.
RESULTS: Item completion rates were high, with few items skipped by participants. Subscales demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach α=.650-.834) and demonstrated significant associations with BMI (p ≤.001) and HbA(1c) (p ≤.001).
CONCLUSIONS: The PDQ is a useful measure of diabetes self-care behaviors and related perceptions and barriers that is reliable and valid and feasible to administer in a clinic setting. This measure may be used to obtain data for assessing diabetes self-management and barriers and to guide patient care.