The development and validation of the awareness and knowledge of diabetes distress questionnaire among doctors in Malaysia

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to develop and validate the Awareness and Knowledge of Diabetes Distress (AKODD) questionnaire, so that it can be used to assess the knowledge attitude and practice of doctors who treat patients with diabetes distress. This validation study was conducted at the University Malaya Medical Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from June to July 2019. Doctors from the Departments of Primary Care Medicine, Medicine, Psychological Medicine, Emergency Medicine and Staff Health Unit, who could understand English were recruited, as they treat patients with diabetes or diabetes distress. The AKODD was developed based on literature review. Next, an expert panel met to review findings from literature and to develop the items for AKODD. The AKODD has 3 sections: socio-demographic information, awareness and knowledge. It was then piloted among 7 doctors from the Departments of Primary Care Medicine, Medicine, Psychological Medicine and Emergency Medicine. No problems were encountered. Hence, no changes were made, and the AKODD was administered twice: at 0 and 2 weeks as part of the validation process. Discriminative validity was assessed by comparing scores of doctors who had/had not attended a diabetes course before. A total of 103/119 doctors agreed to participate (response rate = 86.6%). Flesch Reading Ease was 51.1. Thirty-three doctors (32.0%) have heard of diabetes distress before. Doctors had a good level of knowledge regarding diabetes distress with a median score of 77.8% (IQR:66.7–88.9). The AKODD had adequate discriminative validity between participants who had (83.3%)/had not attended a diabetes course before (72.2%; p<0.049). The AKODD had good internal consistency (Kuder-Richardson = 0.931) and adequate reliability as 9/18 items were not statistically significant at test-retest. The AKODD was found to be a valid and reliable questionnaire to assess the awareness and knowledge of diabetes distress among doctors in Malaysia as it had adequate psychometric properties.