Future research directions
Further research is needed to confirm the present findings, especially for carbohydrate counting and longer-term follow-up designs to assess other biochemical outcomes to validate self-reported behaviour. Longer-term designs, potentially integrated into health care clinics, would also be useful to check for intervention effects given common health complications and to establish the cost-effectiveness of behaviour change interventions in this context. Also, the utility of an integrated theory intervention approach for other key self-management practices such as self-monitoring of blood glucose and medication adherence should be assessed. Considering the growing prevalence of T2D in adolescents and children, further studies are needed to promote diabetes management behaviours in these age groups including parental adherence to carbohydrate counting and individuals diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (Kawamura, 2007, Scavone et al., 2010, Bell et al., 2014).