Table 5.

Themes, Relevant TDF Domains, and Descriptions With Illustrative Quotes.

Theme	TDF domain	Description	Quotes
What does this mean for me?	Knowledge	Lack of knowledge around CKD awareness and disease-specific knowledge.	“I really don’t know what GFR means . . . and what the numbers mean. Like is a low number good? Is the higher number good? What is it. all I know is what my number is.” (FG 2 Patient 4) “I needed my questions addressed, I needed to know why and what can I do.” (INT Patient 13)
	Intentions	Unmatched timing of information: “readiness to learn” versus “CKD category.”	“I think for me, and perhaps other people you are speaking to, there are stages of understanding.” (INT Patient 23) “There needs to be more continuing education when you have this condition because things do change, not only the information, you change as you evolve into your condition and stage of life.” (INT Patient 21)
Help me help myself.	Beliefs about capabilities	Developing self-efficacy and self-confidence.	“Everyone is proactively looking after their own condition and searching out information . . . these are great things that self-managers do.” (FG 1 Patient 9) “Some people they don’t want to speak up and they don’t want to ask questions. They say here is what the doctor said so that’s it. Well, that’s wrong, you got to ask questions.” (FG 5 Patient 1) “You have to stay disciplined, you know because you’re health comes first.” (FG 2 Patient 2)
	Behavior regulation	Identifying individualized self-monitoring techniques.	“I set a timer for him, like on his watch so that he has his meals and snacks and everything.” (FG 2 Caregiver 1) “I make a record of my sugar and my blood pressure and keeping a record of that.” (FG 2 Patient 5)
	Skills	Acquiring skills with repeated practice.	“We are experts at looking after ourselves, but we aren’t experts at looking after anybody else” (FG 1 Patient 2) “I research the whole thing (medications) because I don’t want to make my body worse.” (FG 3 Patient 8)
How does this make me feel?	Social influences	Optimizing social supports.	“It was just so difficult for me because I live alone.” (FG 3 Patient 7) “You can share your challenges and you can hear other people going through similar things and you don’t feel as isolated.” (FG 3 Patient 6) “Suddenly I couldn’t do sports and I wasn’t working. So, it’s like suddenly my whole social world was pretty much gone.” (INT Patient 23)
	Optimism	Recognizing positive and negative feelings.	“Life goes on, absolutely, and this disease makes you stronger. You don’t dwell on it.” (FG 3 Patient 8) “No matter what you do it’s going to get worse either way.” (INT Patient 4)
	Beliefs about consequences	Expectations about outcomes based on restrictions disease places on individual and consequences of performing a behavior.	“Diet, it becomes a frustration for me. I can’t have this, I can’t have that. I need clearance of everything that goes in my mouth and I hate it.” (FG 4 Patient 2) “Every aspect (of life) like financial, physical, social, emotional is affected.” (INT Patient 23)
	Environmental Context and Resources	Circumstances of an individual’s situation or environment that encourages or discourages the development of skills and confidence.	“The kidney foundation has a very user friendly, simple manual.” (FG 1 Patient 2) “I prefer my information to come from like my doctor. I find reading online, yeah I don’t know what’s reliable and what’s not and then when you find something quite medical like that, it’s hard to kind of decipher how it applies to you. So, I find what’s most useful is kind of what is given to me by my physician.” (FG 1 Patient 4)
Who am I?	Social/professional role and identity	Identifying with a new or altered role.	“It’s all about coping as far as I’m concerned . . . it’s always trying to find my new normal as depending on where my kidneys are at and so for me my whole journey has been around balancing and trying to figure it out.” (FG 1 Patient 2) “I developed a line which said, normal is whatever the day is because it never is the same twice in our house.” (FG 1 Caregiver 1)

Note. TDF = Theoretical Domains Framework; CKD = chronic kidney disease; GFR = glomerular filtration rate; FG = focus group; INT = telephone interview.