Development and Validation of a Diabetes Questionnaire for Middle School Students

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Educational Psychology
• Adolescent Health

Background:

• Diabetes prevalence is a growing concern among adolescents.
• Effective diabetes education requires accurate assessment of student knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs.
• Existing tools may not adequately capture these factors in middle school populations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a comprehensive questionnaire for assessing diabetes knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and intent to change behaviors.
• To establish the reliability and construct validity of the questionnaire in a middle school setting.

Main Methods:

• A cross-sectional validation study was conducted with 7th and 8th-grade students in urban middle schools.
• A 25-item questionnaire assessing diabetes knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral intent was administered.
• Statistical analyses included Cronbach's alpha, test-retest reliability, and factor analyses.

Main Results:

• The questionnaire demonstrated acceptable internal consistency with Cronbach's alpha coefficients of 0.7.
• Factor analyses confirmed strong relationships between questionnaire items and underlying constructs.
• Confirmatory factor analysis indicated a reasonable model-data fit.

Conclusions:

• The study successfully validated a questionnaire for assessing diabetes-related factors in middle school students.
• This tool can inform the development of targeted diabetes prevention and education programs for adolescents.
• Further validation in specific diabetes prevention programs is recommended.