An empirical investigation of time spent on self-care among patient with diabetes

• Applicant: Dr. Nadja Chernyak
• Subject Area: Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine
• Term: from 2012 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 211811532

Time spent receiving and recovering from medical procedures, engaging in healthy behaviors and self-care is a resource that is essential for maintaining or improving health. Patient time costs may affect willingness to undertake treatment and adherence to it. Valid time measurement methods Is a necessary condition to empirically investigate patterns of time investment to health and their possible influence on observed health inequalities across various socioeconomic groups. The proposed project aims to develop, test and validate a method to measure time spent on regular health-related activities such as self-care, using diabetes as a case study of a chronic disease requiring a substantial investment of patient time. To achieve this objective, a recall questionnaire measuring time spent on diabetes self-care will be compared to a prospective diary using a within-subject design in 210 patients with diabetes randomly sampled from the potentially eligible patients in a cooperating outpatient clinical centre. The instruments will be compared with regard to their feasibility, costs and convergent validity. In addition, a subsequent larger scale study applying the method in a representative sample of patients with diabetes mellitus in order to explore patterns of time allocation to health-related activities across various patient groups will be prepared within the framework of the project.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Participating Persons: Professor Dr. Guido Giani; Professorin Dr. Andrea Icks