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. 2015;30(1):13-22.

Common Sense Illness Beliefs of Diabetes among At-Risk Latino College Students

Silvia J Santos  1 , Maria T Hurtado-Ortiz  1 , Laurenne Lewis  2 , Julia Ramirez-Garcia  3
Affiliations

Common Sense Illness Beliefs of Diabetes among At-Risk Latino College Students

Silvia J Santos et al. Am J Health Stud. 2015.

Abstract

This study examined the validity of the Implicit Model of Illness Questionnaire (IMIQ - Schiaffino & Cea, 1995) when used with Latino college students (n = 156; 34% male, 66% female) who are at-risk for developing diabetes due to family history of this disease. An exploratory principal-axis factor analysis yielded four significant factors - curability, personal responsibility, symptom variability/seriousness, and personal attributions - which accounted for 35% of variance and reflected a psychosocial-biomedical common sense perspective of diabetes. Factor-based analyses revealed differences in diabetes illness beliefs based on students' age, generational status, acculturation orientation, and disease experience of the afflicted relative.

Keywords: Common sense illness beliefs; Latinos college students; diabetes; health beliefs.

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