Date of Conferral

2022

Degree

Doctor of Psychology (Psy.D.)

School

Health Education and Promotion

Advisor

Lee Stadtlander

Abstract

There are 28.7 million people diagnosed with diabetes and 8.5 million undiagnosed, with another 96 million prediabetic in the United States. Diabetes health care cost in the United States is $327 billion in 2017. Type 2 diabetes constitutes 90-95% of those numbers. Type 2 diabetes has many psychosocial factors plagued by stress that advance this illness. Foot reflexology has addressed these psychosocial factors with other illnesses. The conceptual framework of this study were the stress and coping theory, cognitive activation theory of stress, and the sense of coherence theory. The purpose of this study was to analyze type 2 diabetics using foot reflexology in contrast to type 2 diabetics not using foot reflexology. The variables measured were HbA1c (self-reported), perceived stress, coping ability, and a sense of coherence. A convenience sample of 10 type 2 diabetic foot reflexology respondents and 31 type 2 diabetic non-foot reflexology respondents were reached through computer access. The quantitative survey design was quasi-experimental with two scalable questionnaires, the Perceived Stress Scale-10 (PSS-10) and the Sense of Coherence-13 (SOC-13), and the demographics included self-report of blood sugar level. The results indicated there was no significant difference in the two groups. Findings from this study encourage positive social change by empowering type 2 diabetics with a means of managing their illness, decreasing future complications, and lowering societal cost of this disease. Future research in this area may wish to enlarge the sample size and recruit through additional organizations.

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