Content area
Full Text
Treatment for type 1 diabetes is often difficult for adolescents because of the multiple daily tasks required for successful management. Hence, adolescents who are more intrinsically motivated to manage their health might be more persistent with their diabetes care and consequently be in better glycemic control. We therefore examined the proportion of variance that intrinsic motivation contributed to HbA^sub 1c^ in 43 adolescents diagnosed with type 1 diabetes relative to other disease-related and psychosocial factors that have been linked to glycemic control in cross-sectional research.
After receiving approval from the institutional review board, we recruited adolescents with a mean age of 14.14 ±1.73 years from a university-affiliated diabetes clinic to participate in the study. All of the participants had been diagnosed with diabetes for a minimum of 1 year (M = 5.85 ± 4.53 years), and none were on an insulin pump. The sample consisted mostly of girls (65%); 74% were Caucasian, and 26% were African American. The mean family income was in the $30,000-45,000 range. The adolescents completed standardized measures of intrinsic/extrinsic motivation (Health...