Recently, a new diabetes-specific questionnaire, the Diabetes Health Profile (DHP), has been developed to identify psychosocial dysfunctioning of insulinrequiring (NIDDM) and insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) patients. The DHP comprises three dimensions: psychological distress (PSY: 14 items), barriers to activity (BAR: 12 items) and disinhibited eating (EAT: five items). This study investigates the psychometric properties of the DHP in Dutch noninsulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) patients referred for insulin therapy. In addition, the relationship between patient characteristics and the DHP outcome was examined. The factor structure found was similar but not identical to former studies, but construct validity was supported by high correlations of our factor structure and the original factor outcome and Cronbach's CL The three factors explained 32% of the variance, supporting earlier findings.
It was shown that Cronbach's a was satisfactory (0.72,0.72 and 0.79). Convergent validity showed strong and significant correlations between the PSY/BAR dimensions and predicted corresponding scales of the RAND-36. However, the PSY/BAR dimensions also showed, although less strong, significant correlations with the non-corresponding RAND-36 scales. The EAT dimension showed only correlations with two of the RAND-36 dimensions, thus measuring a different trait. Regression analysis showed that older patients had less problems with items of the EAT dimension and that no difference was found between men and women, supporting earlier findings.
The hyperglycaemic complaint 'fatigue' gave a significantly lower score (more l