Parental Involvement and Adolescents' Diabetes Management: The Mediating Role of Self-Efficacy and Externalizing and Internalizing Behaviors

Abstract

Objective To examine mediating processes linking parental involvement to diabetes management (adherence and metabolic control) during adolescence. Methods A total of 252 young adolescents (M age ¼ 12.49 years, SD ¼ 1.53, 53.6% females) with type 1 diabetes reported their parents' involvement in diabetes management (relationship quality, monitoring, and behavioral involvement), their own externalizing and internalizing behaviors, diabetes-self efficacy, and adherence behaviors. HbA1c was drawn from medical records. Results SEM analyses indicated that the associations of mothers' and fathers' relationship quality with diabetes outcomes were mediated by adolescents' perceptions of self-efficacy and externalizing behaviors, and the associations of fathers' monitoring and behavioral involvement with adherence were partially mediated by adolescents' self-efficacy. There were also direct (non-mediated) associations between mothers' monitoring and adherence, and fathers' monitoring and adherence and metabolic control. Conclusions Quality of the parent-adolescent relationship and monitoring are important for better adherence and metabolic control among adolescents through higher diabetes self-efficacy.

Levels and Predictors of Adherence to Self-care Behaviour among Adult Type 2 Diabetics at Arba Minch General Hospital, Southern Ethiopia

“…Positive family behaviors and parents encouraging and supporting youth in completing their own self-management may exert positive effects on diabetes [55,56]. Friends and families of individuals with diabetes play an important role in their well-being, successful selfmanagement, and achievement of in-range glycaemic control [57][58][59].…”

Measurement of Parental Self-Efficacy for Diabetes Management in Young Children

“…Parental involvement with diabetes-related tasks has been found to be an important factor in managing the disease in both pre-adolescent (Armstrong, Mackey, & Streisand, 2011) and adolescent (Berg et al, 2011) populations. Furthermore, parental involvement may increase the adolescent's self-efficacy for diabetes management (Greening, Stoppelbein, & Reeves, 2006).…”

Engaging Teens and Parents in Collaborative Practice

“…5 Extremes of overprotection (overparenting) or totally eliminating parent involvement in the teen's diabetes management are fraught with problems with selfefficacy issues on one end and poor control on the other. 6,7 Thus, interdependence should be the goal to avoid all of these issues.…”