[Psychometric analysis of diabetes self-care scale (translated and adapted to Portuguese)]

It is fundamental for health professionals to know the status of a certain phenomenon with health implications in individuals and population groups, not only for health care planning, but also to adjust the strategies to resolve problems. In type-2 diabetics, the evaluation and adherence to a therapeutic regimen are processes that need to be simplified, in order to become useful to the health care practices. The objective of this study was to translate to Portuguese, adapt culturally and evaluate the psychometric proprieties of the self-care activities scale--Summary of Diabetes Self-Care Activities--SDSCA.

The Portuguese version of the scale was applied to a sample of 103 male individuals, with an average of 60.8 years old (SD=10.8), 4.1 years of education (SD=2.1) and a mean of 7.6 (SD=8.7) of Diabetes diagnosis. The comprehension, face and content validity were tested and the psychometric properties were accessed using the Cronbach's Coefficient Alpha (a), inter-item correlation coefficients and the principal components analysis. In order to evaluate the sensitivity to change, the participants answered the questionnaires twice (with a two months time gap), mediated by an educational structured programme. The average of the differences, between the baseline levels of adherence and the levels after an educational intervention, was analysed using the paired t test.

From an initial scale with a set of 21 items, there was a reduction to 17 items, after excluding those that lacked internal consistency in sub-scales. These final items were grouped in 6 dimensions and their internal consistency was measured using the Cronbach's Coefficient Alpha (a) and it ranged between 0.68 and 0.36 in sub-scales. The scale showed to be sensitive to the phenomenon status change, since after the educational program, the average levels of adherence were significantly higher in all dimensions, except in medication.

In the translated and adapted version, the self-care scale with Diabetes showed to be easy to apply and its internal consistency was acceptable, which allowed us to explain the adherence phenomenon by the main components of the therapeutic regimen, thus indicating sensitiveness to changes.