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Psychosocial Research
Diabetes causal attributions among affected and unaffected individuals
  1. Margaret K Rose1,
  2. Kristi A Costabile2,
  3. Sarah E Boland1,
  4. Rachel W Cohen1,
  5. Susan Persky1
  1. 1Social and Behavioral Research Branch, National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, USA
  2. 2Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Susan Persky; perskys{at}mail.nih.gov

Abstract

Objective The present study aims to describe and compare causal attributions for type 1 diabetes (T1D) and type 2 diabetes (T2D) among affected and unaffected individuals and to investigate the relationships among attributions, attitudes, and beliefs.

Research design and methods Adults with no diabetes (N=458), T1D (N=192), or T2D (N=207) completed an online survey. Measures assessed diabetes conceptual knowledge, causal attributions for T1D and T2D, perceived control over diabetes onset, and favorability judgements of individuals affected by each type.

Results Results indicate general agreement on causal attributions for T1D and T2D among all respondent groups, with some divergences by disease status. All respondents attributed both T1D and T2D to genetics, and genetic attributions were positively associated with favorability judgements of individuals with T2D, but not those with T1D.

Conclusions This report sets the stage for investigations into how and why attributions for T1D and T2D differ and the implications of these differences including stigmatization of individuals with diabetes and diabetes-related self-concept. Additionally, this work can inform efforts towards clinical and public health education to prevent and optimize treatment of T1D and T2D.

  • type 1 diabetes
  • type 2 diabetes
  • causal attributions
  • illness perceptions
  • lay beliefs

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjdrc-2019-000708

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors SP and KAC conceived of the study. SP, KAC and RWC designed the study. SP, KAC, SEB and MKR analyzed the data. All authors interpreted the data. SP and MKR drafted the manuscript. All authors contributed substantially to its revision. SP takes responsibility for the paper as a whole.

    • Funding This work was supported by NHGRI/NIH Z01-HG200383-07.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Ethics approval This study was determined to be IRB-exempt by the National Institutes of Health Office of Human Subjects Research.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data availability statement Data are available on reasonable request.