Validation of the French Version of the Yale Food Addiction Scale: An Examination of its Factor Structure, Reliability, and Construct Validity in a Nonclinical Sample

Abstract

Objective: The concept of food addiction has recently been proposed by applying the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision, criteria for substance dependence to eating behaviour. Food addiction has received increased attention given that it may play a role in binge eating, eating disorders, and the recent increase in obesity prevalence. Currently, there is no psychometrically sound tool for assessing food addiction in French. Our study aimed to test the psychometric properties of a French version of the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) by establishing its factor structure and construct validity in a nonclinical population.Method: A total of 553 participants were assessed for food addiction (French version of the YFAS) and binge eating behaviour (Bulimic Investigatory Test Edinburgh and Binge Eating Scale). We tested the scale's factor structure (factor analysis for dichotomous data based on tetrachoric correlation coefficients), internal consistency, and construct validity with measures of binge eating. Results:Our results supported a 1-factor structure, which accounted for 54.1% of the variance. This tool had adequate reliability and high construct validity with measures of binge eating in this population, both in its diagnosis and symptom count version. A 2-factor structure explained an additional 9.1% of the variance, and could differentiate between patients with high, compared with low, levels of insight regarding addiction symptoms. Conclusions:In our study, we validated a psychometrically sound French version of the YFAS, both in its symptom count and diagnostic version. Future studies should validate this tool in clinical samples. W W WValidation de la version française de l'échelle de dépendance alimentaire de Yale : un examen de sa structure factorielle, de sa fiabilité, et de la validité du construct dans un échantillon non clinique Objectif : La dépendance alimentaire est un concept qui a été récemment proposé en appliquant au comportement alimentaire les critères de dépendance à une substance du Manuel diagnostique et statistique des troubles mentaux, 4e édition, révisé. La dépendance

The prevalence of food addiction as assessed by the Yale Food Addiction Scale: A systematic review

“…Age of included participants ranged from four to ninety years. Fourteen studies included older adults aged >35 years [27,35,[37][38][39][44][45][46][49][50][51][52]56], ten studied younger adults aged from 18-35 years [11,26,[32][33][34]36,[40][41][42][43]47,53,54,57], and one studied children and adolescents <18 years [48]. Seven studies investigated a healthy weight population (18.5-25 [58].…”

“…Four studies specifically noted that the YFAS was translated into a language other than English (Italian, German and French) [32,37,40,54], and one study changed the reporting period of twelve months used in the original YFAS to the previous one month [38,39] to give a more proximal indication of YFAS outcomes following an intervention. Fifteen studies investigated both the YFAS diagnosis and symptom score [26,27,32,[36][37][38][39][40]43,44,46,48,49,51,56,57], five used the symptom score exclusively [11,33,41,42,45,53,54] and four used the diagnosis exclusively [34,35,47,50]. Two studies grouped participants as "high" or "low" FA based on the number of YFAS symptoms endorsed [11,41,42].…”

“…Mean symptoms: current BN 6.27 ± 1.04, remitted The weighted mean prevalence of FA across all studies was 19.9% ( Figure 2a) [26,27,32,[34][35][36][37]39,40,[43][44][45][46][47][49][50][51]53,56,57]. Prevalence of FA diagnosis was meta-analyzed by sex with a higher mean prevalence of FA in six samples of females exclusively of 12.2% [35,40,45,47,51,57] compared to 6.4% in four samples of males [45,47,51,57].…”

“…When meta-analyzed by BMI category, the mean prevalence of FA was considerably greater at 24.9% in fourteen studies investigating overweight/obese individuals (Figure 2b) [27,[34][35][36][37][38][39][44][45][46][47]49,51,56,57] compared to 11.1% in six studies of healthy weight individuals (Figure 2c) [26,28,32,43,51,53]. The mean FA prevalence was lower in nine samples of adults younger than 35 years of age at 17.0% [26,32,34,36,40,43,47,53,57] compared to 22.2% in eleven samples of adults aged over 35 years [27,35,37,39,[44][45][46][49][50][51]56]. However, in one study reporting the outcomes of adults aged 62-88 years as well as adults aged 42-64 years, the prevalence of FA diagnosis was lower in the older age group (2.7% and 8.4% respectively) [35].…”

“…Prevalence of FA diagnosis was meta-analyzed by sex with a higher mean prevalence of FA in six samples of females exclusively of 12.2% [35,40,45,47,51,57] compared to 6.4% in four samples of males [45,47,51,57]. When meta-analyzed by BMI category, the mean prevalence of FA was considerably greater at 24.9% in fourteen studies investigating overweight/obese individuals (Figure 2b) [27,[34][35][36][37][38][39][44][45][46][47]49,51,56,57] compared to 11.1% in six studies of healthy weight individuals (Figure 2c) [26,28,32,43,51,53]. The mean FA prevalence was lower in nine samples of adults younger than 35 years of age at 17.0% [26,32,34,36,40,43,47,53,57] compared to 22.2% in eleven samples of adults aged over 35 years [27,35,…”