Abstract:
Diabetes mellitus is a major public health problem because the number of population who are diagnosed with diabetes mellitus tendes to increase every year. People who are at high risk of diabetes mellitus have to adjust their behaviors in order to protect themselves from diabetes mellitus. The purpose of this quasi-experimental research was to examine the effects of self-regulation program on eating behaviors, exercise behaviors, and blood sugar levels among people who were at high risk of diabetes mellitus, based on the self-regulation concept of Bandura (1986), to regulate their behaivors. A simple random sampling method was used to recruit 56 people who were at high risk of diabetes mellitus, lived in the area of Banglamung district, Chon Buri, and also met the inclusion criteria. They were then randomly assigned into either the experimental or the control groups equally (n = 28). The experimental group received nursing care as per the self-regulation program, where as the control group received routine nursing care. The instruments for the experimental study included the self-regulation program, diabetes knowledge handbook, and self-regulation record form. For the data collection, during August to October, 2017, the toos used were the demographic questionnaires, eating behavior questionnaire, and exercise behaviors questionnaire. The data was analyzed by descriptive statistics and independent t-test.
The results revealed that the self-regulation program made the eating behavior, exercise behaviors, and blood sugar level of the examples in the experimental group different from those in the control group, significantly (t = 4.500, P < .001; t = 6.645, p < .001; t = -3.791, p < .001, respectively). In addition, the experimental group had higher mean scores of eating behaviors (M = 37.9, SD = 2.67) and exercise behaviors (M = 11.8, SD = 2.42) than those (M = 34.4, SD = 3.13; M = 7.5, SD = 2.49, respectively) in the control group, significantly; but the mean score of the blood sugar levels in the experimental group (M = 102.5, SD = 9.66) was lower than that in the control group (M = 111.6, SD = 8.10).
The findings suggest that nurses and other health professions can use this self-regulation program to regulate eating and exercise behaviors of the people who are at high risk of diabetes mellitus in communities to control their blood sugar in the normal level, and are able to prevent diabetes mellitus disease.