Validity Studies of Quality of Life Instruments for Eating Disorders

Abstract

To conduct a systematic review of studies that evaluated quality of life (QOL) among individuals with eating disorders, to analyze the characteristics of specific QOL instruments for eating disorders. Bibliographic searches were conducted in 6 databases and manual searches in 2 journals, covering the period from January 1975 to June 2008. The search strategies provided a total of 29,537 references. Out of the 41 studies that met the inclusion criteria for this review, 5 reported on the validation process for 4 specific instruments for eating disorders. Among the 4 specific QOL instruments for eating disorders, 3 presented adequate development procedures and psychometric properties. However, further research is needed to prove the validity and applicability of these instruments. Additional validation studies are needed, especially in relation to patients who deny that they have a disorder.

Health‐related Quality of Life in Adult Inpatients Affected by Anorexia Nervosa

“…Given the ego-syntonic nature of the illness (Serpell et al, 2004;Tirico, Stefano, & Blay, 2010;Vitousek, Watson, & Wilson, 1998), a limitation of this study is represented by AN patients' ambivalence towards their symptoms; this element makes the assessment of improvement particularly difficult. Moreover, to date, there is no consensus on how to specifically measure HRQoL in the ED field (Abbate- Daga et al, 2011).…”

Quality of life in anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and eating disorder not-otherwise-specified

“…However, studies that report higher QoL in AN also report seemingly contradictory findings, such as an increased presence of suicidal thoughts and self-harming behaviours in this group [12]. It is also notable that studies finding less impairment in AN have tended to use generic, rather than ED specific measures of QoL, which - as has been hypothesized - may be less sensitive to certain aspects of impairment associated with these disorders [14]. Inconsistencies in the differences reported across diagnostic groups may also be attributable to the presence of diagnostic subtypes.…”

“…There is evidence that the presence of both bingeing [9,17-19] and purging behaviours [14,20,21] negatively affect QoL in both clinical and community samples, but evidence regarding the impact of the frequency of these behaviours is sparse and contradictory [6,19,22,23]. The effect of BMI on QoL is relatively unexplored, particularly in underweight ED samples [6], though there is some evidence that QoL falls with decreased BMI [11].…”

Assessment of quality of life in people with severe and enduring anorexia nervosa: a comparison of generic and specific instruments

“…The response was the development of four new instruments, three of which have been identified as having particularly strong psychometrics [18], including Engel and colleagues’ EDs quality of life (EDQOL) questionnaire [19]. The stated benefits of these ED-specific instruments include a greater sensitivity to impairment and responsiveness to change compared to generic HRQoL measures, in turn resulting in larger effect sizes in analysis.…”