Reliability and Validity of the Revised Summary of Diabetes Self-Care Activities (SDSCA) for Malaysian Children and Adolescents

Background: Self-care plays an important role in diabetes management. One of theinstruments used to evaluate self-care in patients with diabetes is the Summary ofDiabetes Self-Care Activities (SDSCA) questionnaire. A validated instrument in theMalay language is used to assess self-care practice among children and adolescentswith diabetes in Malaysia.Objective: To translate and evaluate the psychometric properties of the revised versionof the SDSCA questionnaire in the Malay language.Methods: Forward and backward translations were performed. An expert panelreviewed all versions for conceptual and content equivalence. The final versionwas administered to paediatric patients with diabetes between August 2006 andSeptember 2007. Reliability was analysed using Cronbach’s alpha and validity wasassessed using exploratory factor analysis.Results: A total of 117 patients aged 10–18 years were enrolled from nine hospitals.The reliability of overall core items was 0.735 (with item 4) while the reliabilities ofthe four domains were in the range of 0.539–0.838. As core item number 4 wasfound to be problematic and it was subtituted by item 5a (from the expanded SDSCA)to suit local dietary education and practice; and the reliabilities of the overall coreitem (0.782) and the four domains (0.620 – 0.838) improved. Factor loadings of allthe items were greater than 0.4, loaded into the original domains, and accounted for73% of the total variance.Conclusion: The Malay translation of the revised English SDSCA is reliable and validas a guide for Malaysian children and adolescents suffering from diabetes.