Assessing diabetes support in adolescents: factor structure of the modified Diabetes Social Support Questionnaire (DSSQ-Friends)

Aims To determine the underlying factor structure of friends' enacted support behaviours for adolescents with Type 1 diabetes, confirm it in a second sample, delineate distinctive aspects of friends' support and test the reliability of resulting scale. Methods The study included a total of 434 adolescents (54.8% girls), mean age 14.7years, mean duration of diabetes 6.1years. Results Results from the exploratory factor analysis, including data from a random half of the participants revealed a five-factor solution explaining approximately 48.4% of the item variance. The five factors emerged Guidance and Encouragement (13 items; α=0.91), Help in Critical Situations (7 items; α=0.92), Nourishment (11 items; α=0.88), Empathy (6 items; α=0.83) and Help in Exercise (5 items; α=0.76). Confirmatory factor analysis on the remainder of the sample showed good indices of model fit. Comparison of the factor structure across gender and age also presented an excellent fit. In a second-order factor analysis all five factors loaded on one overall factor, Diabetes Social Support-Friends. Construct validity of the resulting scales was supported by predicted associations of Modified Diabetes Specific Support Questionnaire-Friends scale scores with Hb