Diabetes literacy among higher education students

Literacy in diabetes appears to be one of the key tools to combat the increasing prevalence of this chronic disease that has grown exponentially over the years and globally at national level. This study aimed to evaluate the level of literacy in diabetes among students and provide guidelines for proposing an intervention project among this community. The specific objectives were: validate the Diabetes Knowledge Questionnaire (DKQ); and relate the levels of knowledge about diabetes with the socio-demographic and clinical variables. The sample comprises 432 higher education students who replied to the questionnaire in the period between February 15 and March 18, 2016. It was found that the DKQ (Sousa, 2003) that evaluates the knowledge of people about diabetes and its treatment seems to be acceptable for the general population and the two-dimensional model obtained from the confirmatory factor analysis revealed good levels of adjustment (CMIN/ DF=1.645, CFI=0.983, NFI=0.959, TLI=0.979, PCFI=0.803, RMSEA=0.039). The results showed a low level of literacy about diabetes and that there is a need for investment in community education projects to increase literacy about diabetes.