Meta-Analysis of Correlates of Diabetes Patients' Compliance With Prescribed Medications

Abstract

This study quantitatively integrated the results of independent research papers containing correlates of objec tively measured diabetes patients' compliance with prescribed medications. A total of 183 corre lations were extracted from 26 studies. Separate meta-analytic syntheses were conducted to calculate average correlations for different subsets of studies, each. of which represented homoge neous results. In general, emotional stability, internal and external motivations, perceived benefit, and supportive structure were positively associated with patients' compliance; perceived barriers and negative social environment were correlated with poor compliance. The directions of relationships of knowledge and age with compliance varied, depending on other study charac teristics.