The parental monitoring of diabetes care scale: development, reliability and validity of a scale to evaluate parental supervision of adolescent illness management.
OBJECTIVE
Monitoring of adolescents' behavior and whereabouts has been repeatedly identified as an important predictor of adolescent behavioral outcomes. However, to date, measures of parental supervision and monitoring are lacking in the chronic illness literature. The present study describes development and initial evaluation of a measure of parental monitoring of the illness management of adolescents with diabetes: the Parental Monitoring of Diabetes Care scale (PMDC).


METHODS
Ninety-nine parents of 12-18-year-old children with type 1 diabetes completed the PMDC. Measures of illness management and metabolic control were also obtained.


RESULTS
The PMDC demonstrated good internal consistency (alpha coefficient = .81) and test-rest reliability (ICC = .80). Supporting the instrument's construct validity, confirmatory factor analysis indicated that a five subdomain structure had an acceptable fit to the data, [chi(2) (181.65)/df (126) = 1.44, Bollen-Stine chi(2) = 165.03, p = .32, comparative fit index (CFI) = .91, and root-mean-square error of approximation = .07]. In structural equation models, parental monitoring as assessed by the PMDC had a significant direct effect on adolescent diabetes management, accounting for 38% of the variance. Parental monitoring also had a significant indirect effect on metabolic control.


CONCLUSIONS
The PMDC represents an important first step in the development of measures of parental monitoring for use with adolescents with chronic medical conditions.
Ellis
Deborah A
DA
Carman and Ann Adams Department of Pediatrics, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan 48201, USA. dellis@med.wayne.edu
Templin
Thomas N
TN
Podolski
Cheryl-Lynn
CL
Frey
Maureen A
MA
Naar-King
Sylvie
S
Moltz
Kathleen
K
D000293:Adolescent; D016497:Adolescent Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D000328:Adult; D001786:Blood Glucose / Q000032:analysis; D017028:Caregivers; D002648:Child; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003922:Diabetes Mellitus, Type 1 / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000188:drug therapy*; D019468:Disease Management; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D007328:Insulin / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008991:Monitoring, Physiologic / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D011336:Probability; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018570:Risk Assessment
D001786:Blood Glucose; D007328:Insulin