Association of intermediate health determinants with gestational diabetes self-care: a structural equation modeling approach.

Introduction: Gestational diabetes is a common problem among pregnant women that can lead to many complications for the mothers and their fetuses. Gestational diabetes self-care can reduce the consequences and outcomes of this disease. Some of the factors related to self-care of gestational diabetes are quality of life, social support, and domestic violence. This study aims to investigate the relationship between quality of life, perceived social support, and domestic violence with gestational diabetes self-care using structural equation modeling.

Method: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 400 pregnant women with gestational diabetes from April 22, 2023, to July 6, 2023, in Tehran using convenience sampling. Data were collected using demographics, domestic violence, perceived social support, quality of life, and gestational diabetes self-care questionnaires. After data collection, data analysis was performed using SPSS-21 and Lisrel-8 software.

Results: According to the results obtained from structural equation modeling, among the variables that were related to gestational diabetes self-care, quality of life (B = 0.86) in the direct path and perceived social support (B = 0.48) in the indirect path had the highest positive relationship with gestational diabetes self-care. Domestic violence was the only variable that had no relationship with gestational diabetes self-care in any of the paths.

Conclusion: According to the path analysis, gestational diabetes self-care is directly influenced by perceived quality of life but perceived social support is indirectly positively related to the impact on quality of life with gestational diabetes self-care. Therefore, it is recommended that actions and strategies be adopted to improve the quality of life and increase perceived social support in this vulnerable group.