Psychometric Properties of the Polish Version of the Diabetes Distress Scale (DDS)

BACKGROUND: Type 2 diabetes is a disease that affects the functioning and life of both the patient and their family. It involves the constant treatment, self-care, monitoring of blood glucose levels and adherence to physical activity recommendations. As a result, it causes discomfort, distress and reduces the quality of life. AIM: Due to the lack of a scale that would precisely evaluate the level of distress in patients with diabetes in Poland, we decided to linguistically adapt the DDS scale to the Polish population and investigate its psychometric properties in relation to Polish patients. MATERIAL: The study group consisted of 336 individuals in total, including 156 females (46.43%) and 180 males (53.57%), aged 59.13±8.4 on average. The patients were under the care of a specialist diabetes clinic. The research tool was the Diabetic Stress Scale (DDS). RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Our analysis showed that the reliability of both the scale and its components was at a good level. Only the RD-related part was characterised by a lower Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.614. The DDS scale can be successfully used for the assessment of distress in the Polish population of patients with type 2 diabetes.