Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, 1451 Onyx St, Eugene, OR, 97403, USA.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, USA.
Int J Behav Med. 2024 Aug;31(4):538-548. doi: 10.1007/s12529-023-10191-0. Epub 2023 Jul 6.
Health complications from diabetes place major strain on individuals, financially and emotionally. The onset and severity of these complications are largely driven by patients' behaviors, making psychosocial factors that influence behaviors key targets for interventions. One promising factor is sense of purpose or the degree to which a person believes their life has direction.
The current study investigated whether sense of purpose predicts self-rated health, cardiovascular disease, and smoking status among adults with diabetes concurrently and prospectively. Moreover, it tested whether these associations held across multiple samples and cultures. Coordinated analysis using 12 datasets cross-sectionally and eight longitudinally (total N = 7277) estimated the degree to which sense of purpose is associated with subjective health, smoking status, and cardiovascular disease among adults with diabetes. Coordinated analysis allows for greater generalizability of results across cultures, time periods, and measurement instruments. Datasets were included if they concurrently included a measure of sense of purpose and diabetes status and at least one health measure: self-rated health, current smoking status, or heart condition status.
Sense of purpose was associated with higher self-rated health, smoking status, and cardiovascular disease cross-sectionally and self-rated health prospectively. Purpose was unassociated with changes in health over time.
These results highlight the relationship of a key individual difference, sense of purpose, to the behaviors and outcomes of adults with diabetes. While more research is needed to determine the boundaries of this relationship, it seems sense of purpose may be considered in the future as a potential target for intervention.
糖尿病引起的健康并发症给个人带来了巨大的经济和情感压力。这些并发症的发生和严重程度在很大程度上取决于患者的行为，因此影响行为的心理社会因素是干预的关键目标。一个有前途的因素是目标感，即一个人认为自己的生活有方向的程度。
本研究调查了目标感是否可以预测患有糖尿病的成年人的自我健康评估、心血管疾病和吸烟状况，以及目标感是否可以同时进行横断面和前瞻性预测。此外，它还测试了这些关联在多个样本和文化中的是否成立。使用 12 个横断面数据集和 8 个纵向数据集（总 N=7277）进行协调分析，估计目标感与患有糖尿病的成年人的主观健康、吸烟状况和心血管疾病之间的关联程度。协调分析可以提高结果在不同文化、时间段和测量工具中的可推广性。如果数据集同时包含目标感和糖尿病状况的测量以及至少一个健康测量（自我健康评估、当前吸烟状况或心脏状况），则将其包括在内。
目标感与自我健康评估、吸烟状况和心血管疾病的横断面和自我健康评估的前瞻性相关。目的与健康随时间的变化无关。
这些结果强调了关键个体差异——目标感与患有糖尿病的成年人的行为和结果之间的关系。虽然需要进一步的研究来确定这种关系的界限，但似乎可以考虑将目标感作为未来干预的潜在目标。
