International collaborative research on management self-efficacy in diabetes mellitus.

Diabetes mellitus is a leading chronic illness in the United States and in the Netherlands. Assisting persons with diabetes and their families to manage the illness so that they can have satisfying lives is a challenge for all involved. Persons with diabetes mellitus and their significant others (family members, friends, or other caregivers) must learn and perform management behaviors in order to achieve this goal. Self-efficacy has been shown to be an important predictive variable in initiating and continuing management behaviors. In order to test the impact of self-efficacy on the management of diabetes mellitus and to conduct comparative studies in the Netherlands and the United States, a battery of valid and reliable measurement instruments were needed. Six different instruments in two languages were developed to test children with diabetes and their significant other, adults with insulin dependent diabetes and their significant other, and adults with non-insulin dependent diabetes and their significant other. An overview of the instrument development and testing is described. The testing of different formats due to language terminology and the testing of the instruments for the adults with non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus will be presented.