| The purpose of this investigation was to examine the problem of adolescent diabetic control within an ecological theoretical framework. Thus, Bronfenbrenner's Process-Person-Context-Time Model for ecological research was utilized.;The dependent variable was adolescent diabetic control measured by the HbA1C blood test (i.e., glycosylated hemoglobin assay). The independent variables were: (a) adolescent/maternal individual perceptions of family cohesion, expressiveness, and conflict; (b) adolescent/maternal combined perceptions of overall family cohesion, expressiveness, and conflict; (c) adolescent/maternal combined perceptions of family independence, achievement, moral/religious, intellectual/cultural, cohesion, expressiveness, conflict, and organization as categorical variables describing family typologies; (d) adolescent perceptions of open/problem and total communication with mother; (e) maternal perceptions of open/problem and total communication with adolescent; (f) blood glucose monitoring frequency; (g) age of disease onset; (h) disease duration; (i) adolescent race/ethnicity; (j) adolescent gender, and (k) mother's education level. Self-report measures were utilized to assess these variables and were completed by 196 participants (or 98 adolescent/mother dyads).;Pearson product-moment correlations indicated significant relationships between adolescent diabetic control and (a) adolescent individual perceptions of family cohesion; (b) adolescent/maternal combined perceptions of overall family cohesion; (c) adolescent perceptions of total communication with mother; (d) maternal perceptions of problem communication with adolescent; and (e) blood glucose monitoring frequency. Mean comparisons in HbA1C levels suggested (a) adolescents from support oriented family typologies had lowest mean HbA1C levels, and (b) adolescents from conflict oriented family typologies had highest mean HbA1C levels. Analyses of variance informed significant differences between mother's education level groups (i.e., working and middle class) for (a) adolescent/maternal combined perceptions of overall family cohesion, and (b) adolescent/maternal combined perceptions of intellectual/cultural family characteristics. Stepwise regression revealed that blood glucose monitoring frequency and maternal perceptions of problem communication with adolescent explained 17% of the variance surrounding the problem of diabetic control for these adolescent participants. |
