We would like to know how confident you are in doing certain activities. For each of the following questions, please choose the number that corresponds to your confidence that you can do the tasks regularly at the present time.

Items (using the same format as above):

1. How confident do you feel that you can eat your meals every 4 to 5 hours every day, including breakfast every day?
2. How confident do you feel that you can follow your diet when you have to prepare or share food with other people who do not have diabetes?
3. How confident do you feel that you can choose the appropriate foods to eat when you are hungry (for example, snacks)?
4. How confident do you feel that you can exercise 15 to 30 minutes, 4 to 5 times a week?
5. How confident do you feel that you can do something to prevent your blood sugar level from dropping when you exercise?
6. How confident do you feel that you know what to do when your blood sugar level goes higher or lower than it should be?
7. How confident do you feel that you can judge when the changes in your illness mean you should visit the doctor?
8. How confident do you feel that you can control your diabetes so that it does not interfere with the things you want to do?

Scoring

The score for each item is the number circled. If two consecutive numbers are circled, code the lower number (less self-efficacy). If the numbers are not consecutive, do not score the item. The score for the scale is the mean of the eight items. If more than two items are missing, do not score the scale. Higher number indicates higher self-efficacy.

Characteristics

Tested on 186 subjects with diabetes.

Source of Psychometric Data

Stanford English Diabetes Self-Management study. Study reported in Lorig K, Ritter PL, Villa FJ, Armas J. Community-Based Peer-Led Diabetes Self-Management: A Randomized Trial. The Diabetes Educator 2009; Jul-Aug;35(4):641-51.

Comments

This 8-item scale was originally developed and tested in Spanish for the Diabetes Self-Management study. For internet studies, we add radio buttons below each number. There is another way that we use to format these items, which takes up less space on a questionnaire, shown also in the PDF document. This scale is available in Spanish.

References

Unpublished.

To download this scale and scoring instructions, right click the link below with your mouse and "Save as" to you hard disk or desktop (for Windows), or double click (Mac):

Download PDF version