The Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire-R18 Polish version: factor structure analysis among normal weight and obese adult women

Aims: The present study aimed to examine construct validity of the Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire-R18 (TFEQ-R18) and to investigate variables of the following phenomena: cognitive restraint, uncontrolled eating and emotional eating in normal weight women and women with obesity. Methods: The research sample comprised 237 participants (200 with normal weight and 37 obese); the TFEQ-R18 was distributed to all participants at the same time. Results: We found that the three-factor structure is invariant at each level - configural, metric, scalar and strict. Individuals with obesity scored significantly higher than individuals within normal weight range in uncontrolled eating (p = 0.005) and emotional eating (p = 0.053). Conclusions: Ambiguities between the results of the current and other studies may be explained in terms of controlling the shared variance and measurement error, since only up to date summarized scores were compared across groups.