The eating disorder examination-questionnaire 8: A brief measure of eating disorder psychopathology (EDE-Q8)

ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to develop, evaluate, and standardize a short form of the well-established Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire (EDE-Q). The newly developed EDE-Q8 was required to reflect the originally postulated structure of the EDE-Q. MethodData were drawn from two nationwide representative population surveys in Germany: a survey conducted to develop the EDE-Q8 in 2009 (N=2,520); and a survey conducted in 2013 (N=2,508) for the evaluation and calculation of EDE-Q8 percentiles. ResultsThe EDE-Q8 had excellent item characteristics, very good reliability and a very good model fit for the postulated second-order factorial structure. Furthermore, a strong correlation between the EDE-Q8 and a 13 item short form of the Eating Attitudes Test was observed. DiscussionThe EDE-Q8 appears to be particularly suitable in epidemiological research, when an economical assessment of global eating disorder psychopathology is required. (c) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (Int J Eat Disord 2016; 49:613-616).