Self-Efficacy and Proactive Attitude among Patients with Diabetes

Diabetes exhausts individual's physical as well as psychological resources because of its chronic nature. It has been seen that certain individuals' belief in themselves make it easy for them to survive efficiently through the prolonged uneasiness of the disease. Self efficacy and proactive attitudes are two of the components thought to create a certain kind of possibility to follow a strict medical regimen and build up an optimal confidence level for self-management of the chronic disease. The present study aimed at investigating the relationship between self-efficacy and proactive attitude among diabetic patients. It also studied the impact of different demographic variables like gender, educational qualification, residential area, age, family type, marital status, monthly income and employment status with respect to self efficacy and proactive attitude among patients with diabetes. The sample included 180 diabetic patients (59 male and 121 female) taken from different hospitals of Srinagar city belonging to different parts of Kashmir. Self-efficacy for Managing Chronic Disease developed by Stanford Patient Education centre and Proactive Attitude Scale developed by Ralph Schwarzer were used in the present study for assessing self-efficacy and proactive attitude respectively. Data so collected was analyzed using mean, S.D, correlation, t-test and ANOVA. Findings of the study suggest that there is a significant correlation between self-efficacy and proactive attitude among diabetic patients. The impact of socio-demogrphic variables is also discussed. Gender, residential area and family type showed no significant difference with respect to self-efficacy and proactive attitude.