Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Jing Hu

Date

2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Nursing

Committee Chair

Lin Zhan

Committee Member

Lin Zhan

Committee Member

Reba Umberger

Committee Member

Xichen Mou

Committee Member

Larry Slater

Abstract

Evidence from previous studies showed that older adults with diabetes demonstrate low levels of self-care for managing their symptoms and blood glucose and have difficulty adhering to self-care behaviors for long periods of time. Since self-care is motivated by self-concept, the consistency of self-concept may help patients better cope with their health problems and form longstanding healthy behaviors. The purposes of this study are to: (1) examine the relationship between self-consistency and self-care among older Chinese adults with type 2 diabetes; (2) examine the bi-variate relationships among depressive symptoms, self-consistency, and self-care among older Chinese adults with type 2 diabetes; (3) examine the bi-variate relationships among demographics, health measures, self-consistency, and self-care; and (4) identify the predictors of self-care among self-consistency, depressive symptoms, demographics, and health measures. This is a cross-sectional study of Chinese adults aged 60 years and older with type 2 diabetes in community healthcare centers in Shanghai. Demographic and health data were collected, in addition to data using established scales of self-care, self-consistency, and the geriatric depression. Pearson correlation and multivariate linear regression analyses were used to test the associations between the variables. The sample of 195 older adults with type 2 diabetes were surveyed, and the average age was 71.6 years. The results of Pearson correlation analysis showed that: (1) Self-consistency did not directly correlate with the self-care of older adults with type 2 diabetes; (2) Self-consistency and self-care had a significantly negative correlation with depressive symptoms; (3) Self-consistency overall correlated with the number of comorbidities and SPH except age, gender, education level, marital status, income, duration, HbA1c, BMI, or number of complications; (4) Self-care correlated with the number of complications, but did not correlate with age, gender, education level, marital status, income, duration, HbA1c, BMI, or number of comorbidities, or SPH; (5) The path analysis using multiple linear regression showed that stability of self-concept and depressive symptoms directly and negatively predicted self-care; duration directly and positively predicted self-care; self-knowledge, stability of self-concept, and SPH all directly and negatively predicted depressive symptoms; self-knowledge and SPH indirectly predicted self-care` through depressive symptoms. Future research could build structural equation models to further clarify the relationships among these variables, especially the relationship between self-consistency and self-care, with a larger sample size. Further, a longitudinal study is needed to determine changes in self-care over time and what may account for improvements or declines in self-care over the disease duration.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest

Notes

Embargoed until 2024-01-19

Download

Share

COinS