Diabetes Prevention: An Investigation of Health Knowledge, Beliefs, Lifestyles and Its Motivating Factors and Barriers among Malaysians

Healthy lifestyle is the key to prevent diabetes. Understanding factors affecting people’s practice of healthy lifestyle is therefore important for the development of effective programs to prevent diabetes. This thesis reports differences of health locus of control, diabetes knowledge level, and socio-demographic factors in the practice of lifestyle behaviours – physical activity, diet, smoking, alcohol consumption, and stress level. Besides, sociodemographic factors also affect people’s perceived motivation and barriers in their practice of healthy eating and physical activity. Lastly, interview of health professionals reveal three key diabetes issues such as poor health literacy, poor treatment compliance, and lack of healthy lifestyles.