A comparison of three questionnaires (EAT-12, EDI, and EDE-Q) for assessment of eating problems in healthy female adolescents

Abstract

On the basis of the restraint theory and the continuum hypothesis of eating disorders, the objective of this paper was twofold. First, subjects who, on the basis of items from the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) which are generated from DSM-III-R diagnostic criteria, fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN) were identified. Second, differences in scale scores between a case group and a non-case group were tested, and case group distribution of the two self-report questionnaires Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-12) and Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI) was compared as a means for investigating the sensitivity of the instruments in detecting eating disorder cases. In a classroom setting 224 8th-grade female students from 5 schools in western Norway completed the questionnaires. The responses to the questionnaires were analysed by case group and instrument/subscales by using the t test, Cohen's d-values, eta squared statistic, point biserial correlation, and two-way ANOVA. No BN cases and 10 AN cases were identified. AN cases scored significantly higher on all measures of eating problems than normal subjects and differed most from non-cases on the "dieting" dimension. Clinical implications are discussed in the light of screening.

Bulimia nervosa symptoms in the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD

“…61,62 In a community sample of 224 girls ages 14-15, for instance, none met criteria for BN. 63 Therefore, even if the youth in the current sample were considerably older, it would not be expected that more than five participants would be clinically diagnosed with BN. It is possible that ADHD versus LNCG effect sizes on BN pathology measures may increase in magnitude with age.…”

The Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 in screening DSM-III-R axis-I disorders

“…For an assessment method to be good enough in terms of validity and reliability, it is also important to confirm its quality in different languages. Several such studies have been published recently (17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23).…”

Measuring eating concerns in Black and White adolescent girls

“…Although the standardization groups for the EDI were college-aged women (mean age for the patient group ¼ 23.3 years; mean age for the female comparison group ¼ 19.9 years), the EDI is often used with young and middle adolescent samples (Engelsen & Laberg, 2001;Simmons, Smith, & Hill, 2002) because this is the time of greatest risk for the development of eating disorders (Ohring, Graber, & Brooks-Gunn, 2002). However, caution must be used in generalizing data derived from older clinical samples to younger nonclinical samples.…”