| Description |
Type 1 diabetes is a difficult chronic illness for early emerging adults (EAs; will 18 24-year-olds) to manage as it requires numerous daily tasks including monitoring involvement in illness management declines. Two factors that are related to diabetes management and HbA1c (an index of how much sugar is in the blood over a 3 4-month period) among EAs include executive function (EF, working memory, inhibition, and task shifting) and parental involvement (acceptance and monitoring). EF and parental involvement may be beneficial for HbA1c as they may be associated with more healthy eating. The primary goal and our first aim of the study was to examine whether these factors affect healthy eating during emerging adulthood for individuals with T1D. Our second aim was to examine more distal factors including socioeconomic status (SES) as well as ethnicity in terms of their associations on healthy eating. Our third aim was to examine the association between healthy eating and HbA1c. These aims were examined in an existing longitudinal database (READY; Berg et al., 2019) through a secondary data analysis. At time 3 (two years from the time they graduated from high school), approximately 200 young adults with diabetes (average age 20) completed an item related to healthy eating ranging from healthy eating (e.g., I am on a strict diet, I watch everything I eat and consider myself a healthy eater) to little concern about nutrition 9e.g., I eat pretty much what I want and don't worry about diet or nutrition). Executive function was measured in two ways: EAs completed the BRIEF at baseline (time 1), a self-report measure of EF, and EAs completed a battery of performance-based measures. To measure parental involvement, EAs reported on how much their parents were monitoring their diabetes management activities and more general activities. SES was measured in a variety of ways, including self-report and a geocode of neighborhood disorder. |
