RESEARCH Assessing self-manageme in

As one of the major non-communicable diseases [1], dia-betes mellitus, has become a challenging health problem worldwide [2]. According to estimates of the International Diabetes Federation [2], 382 million adults suffered from diabetes in 2013 (worldwide prevalence: 8.3%). Addition-ally, there is an increasing prevalence of multiple, co-occurring conditions especially for patients with severe diseases like diabetes mellitus [3,4]. This increasing preva-lence influences the delivery of chronic illness care strongly [5,6]. As a chronic disease, diabetes mellitus requires a high level of individual responsibility because the vast majority of daily care is handled by the patient himself [7,8]. There-fore, care for people with chronic diseases is shifting away from patients as passive recipients to patients with active involvement in their everyday health care. To accomplish this change strengthening self-management has become