Insulin dependent diabetes is an incurable disease requiring complex management by the patient and/or his family. Previous research has found that there is no specific personality type associated with this or other diseases, nor do chronically ill persons exhibit characteristic behavioral or emotional problems. An attempt to identify the cognitive, affective, and behavioral parts of adjustment to childhood diabetes involved two instruments for measuring diabetes attitudes. The Diabetes Opinion Survey measures the child's attitudes on stigma, rule orientation, divine intervention, family interruption, and sick role. The Parent Diabetes Opinion Survey measures stigma, rule orientation, divine intervention, family interruption, manipulativeness, attitudes toward medical staff, reactions: observations/detection, and consumption of sweets. Compliance was found to be reliably measured using 24-hour recall interviews with mother and child questioning five areas: (1) insulin injection; (2) diet: type; (3) diet: amount; (4) exercise; and (5) eating/testing frequency. The results suggest that measures of chronically ill children's adjustment must be disease specific. (ABL)