Research opportunity: Adults with type 1 or type 2 diabetes invited to take part in online survey.
by Dr Elizabeth Holmes-Truscott
The landscape of diabetes treatments, technologies and education programs is forever changing and growing, but is united in the goal to improve the lives of people with diabetes. We believe that it is essential to evaluate the impact of existing and novel diabetes treatment, technology and programs, on quality of life, not only medical outcomes.
Quality of life cannot be assessed with blood or other medical tests. Quality of life is subjective – it is only truly known by the individual – so it is not even appropriate to ask a health professional to provide a ‘proxy’ assessment of a person’s quality of life. Quality of life means different things to different people, at different times. There are now many questionnaires available to assess the impact of diabetes on quality of life. This is where we need your help! We think its important for people with diabetes to tell us, researchers, which are the best questionnaire(s) from your perspective – which are most relevant, easy to understand, easy to complete, etc,.
We invite English-speaking adults (18-75 years old) with type 1 or type 2 diabetes to complete the ‘Your SAY (Self-management And You): Quality of Life’ online survey.
In order to have an opinion, we ask that you complete several quality of life questionnaires and then give your feedback on what you like or don’t like about each one. We know the survey is quite long and the questions do seem repetitive but it is important to pitch these questions against each other to understand which ones work best for which purpose. The findings of the survey will assist researchers and health professionals in choosing the ‘best’ measure of quality of life for people with diabetes.
We very much hope you will get involved, and have Your SAY by completing the online survey.
The Your SAY study is being conducted by the ACBRD, University of Sheffield and University of Surrey and is a sub-study of DAFNEplus (Dose Adjustment for Normal Eating). The findings of the Your SAY study will inform questionnaire selection for DAFNE.
