Their Children Parents' Perceptions of Factors That Affect Successful Diabetes Management for

ABSTRACT. Objective. To learn which factors par-ents perceive to be most influential in determining suc-cessful type 1 diabetes management. Methods. A 4-stage mixed qualitative-quantitativemethod that consists of a series of focus groups, a survey,and in-depth interviews was used to ensure that parentsgenerated, prioritized, and explained their own ideas. Ineach stage, parents offered a new level of insight intotheir perception of how children achieve good metaboliccontrol while living as normal a life as possible. Thesurvey responses were divided into statistically differentranks, and the Kruskal-Wallis test was used to comparethe results between subgroups. Results. A total of 149 parents participated in theformative qualitative phases, 799 families (66%) re-sponded to the parent-generated survey, and 67 explan-atory interviews were conducted. The families who re-sponded to the survey had children of varied ages (mean:11.9 years; SD: 4.44) and diabetes control (mean hemo-globin A1c: 8.22%; SD: 1.65); 84.1% of respondents werewhite, 12.3% were black, and 89% were privately insured.The 30 survey items were statistically discriminated into8 ranks. The items cover a wide range of categories,including concrete ways of achieving better control, fam-ilies’ or children’s traits that affect coping ability, actionsof the health care team that support versus underminefamilies’ efforts, and the availability of community sup-ports. No clear pattern emerged regarding 1 category thatparents perceived to matter most.