Development and Validation of a Reality Therapy Educational Package and Its Effectiveness on Quality of Life and Mental Health in Older Adults with Diabetes
Keywords:
Reality therapy, quality of life, mental health, diabetes, older adultsAbstract
The purpose of the present study was to develop and validate a reality therapy educational package and to evaluate its effectiveness on the quality of life and mental health of older adults with diabetes. This study was conducted in two phases using qualitative and quantitative approaches with applied objectives. In the first phase, thematic analysis was used to conduct interviews with experts in the field of reality therapy. The second phase was an experimental study using a multi-group pretest–posttest design accompanied by a follow-up period. The qualitative population included all psychology specialists with a PhD in psychology who were proficient in the reality therapy approach in Tehran in 2023, from which 12 individuals were selected through purposive non-random sampling to validate the reality therapy educational package. The quantitative research population consisted of all older adults with diabetes in Tehran in 2023, from which 50 individuals were selected through convenience sampling. The instruments used in this study included the 28-item General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg, 1978) and the World Health Organization Quality of Life Short Form (World Health Organization, 1989). The obtained data were analyzed using SPSS version 27 and R version 4.3.1 (packages: car, jmv, psych, and RVAideMemoire). Statistical analyses in the quantitative phase included multivariate and univariate analysis of covariance, repeated-measures analysis of variance, and the Bonferroni post hoc test. In the qualitative phase, thematic analysis was used to analyze the interviews, and the Lawshe method was used to examine the content validity of the designed protocol. The thematic analysis findings showed that the reality therapy–based educational package consisted of 20 organizing themes and 9 main themes, based on which 9 training sessions were developed. In the quantitative phase, the results indicated that the reality therapy educational package was effective in improving quality of life and mental health in older adults with diabetes. Therefore, it is recommended that psychologists, counselors, and individuals or organizations working in the field of aging use the reality therapy–based educational package to enhance the quality of life and general health of older adults with diabetes.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Sara Fallahi (Author); Fatemeh Ghaemi; Hossein Ebrahimi Moghadam (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
