The Diabetes Self-Management Questionnaire (DSMQ): development and evaluation of an instrument to assess diabetes self-care activities associated with glycaemic control

Table 4 Rotated factor loadings of the DSMQ items

Items		Factor 1	Factor 2	Factor 3	Factor 4
1	Check blood sugar levels with care and attention	0.72	0.34	0.00	−0.10
4	Take diabetes medication as prescribed	0.67	0.16	−0.02	−0.19
6	Record blood sugar levels regularly	0.50	0.44	0.18	−0.22
10	Do not check blood sugar levels frequently enough	−0.76	−0.12	0.18	0.14
12	Forget to take/ skip diabetes medication	−0.76	0.01	0.08	0.03
2	Choose food to easily achieve optimal blood sugar	0.32	0.71	−0.14	−0.11
5	Occasionally eat lots of sweets/ high-carb foods	−0.10	−0.79	0.02	0.02
9	Follow specialist’s dietary recommendations	0.12	0.79	−0.12	−0.02
13	Sometimes have real ‘food binges’	−0.10	−0.59	0.29	0.17
8	Do physical activity to achieve optimal sugar levels	0.13	0.31	−0.67	0.14
11	Avoid physical activity, although good for diabetes	−0.10	−0.12	0.87	0.05
15	Skip planned physical activity	0.02	−0.00	0.82	0.12
3	Keep recommended doctors’ appointments	0.12	0.12	−0.01	−0.71
7	Avoid diabetes-related doctors’ appointments	−0.15	−0.14	0.02	0.70
14	Should see medical practitioner(s) more often	−0.13	0.03	0.05	0.77
16	Diabetes self-care is poor	−0.48	−0.43	0.35	0.23

Extraction method: Principal component analysis. Rotation method: Varimax.
Items are shortened for ease of presentation; related factor loadings are printed in bold.

ISSN: 1477-7525