AI Article Synopsis
- Minimizing questionnaire length is crucial in research on eating disorders to enhance engagement and reduce the burden on participants, especially regarding sensitive topics that may evoke negative emotions.
- The study employed item response theory to shorten three established scales related to eating disorders while maintaining their original measurement quality, assessing the reliability and validity of these new shorter forms.
- Findings revealed successful shorter versions of the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire, the SCOFF questionnaire, and the Dysmorphic Concern Questionnaire, showing good fit and valid correlations with longer versions and other relevant measures among UK adults.
Article Abstract
Background: When collecting data from human participants, it is often important to minimise the length of questionnaire-based measures. This makes it possible to ensure that the data collection is as engaging as possible, while it also reduces response burden, which may protect data quality. Brevity is especially important when assessing eating disorders and related phenomena, as minimising questions pertaining to shame-ridden, unpleasant experiences may in turn minimise any negative affect experienced whilst responding.
Methods: We relied on item response theory to shorten three eating disorder and body dysmorphia measures, while aiming to ensure that the information assessed by the scales remained as close to that assessed by the original scales as possible. We further tested measurement invariance, correlations among different versions of the same scales as well as different measures, and explored additional properties of each scale, including their internal consistency. Additionally, we explored the performance of the 3-item version of the modified Weight Bias Internalisation Scale and compared it to that of the 11-item version of the scale.
Results: We introduce a 5-item version of the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire, a 3-item version of the SCOFF questionnaire, and a 3-item version of the Dysmorphic Concern Questionnaire. The results revealed that, across a sample of UK adults (N = 987, ages 18-86, M = 45.21), the short scales had a reasonably good fit. Significant positive correlations between the longer and shorter versions of the scales and their significant positive, albeit somewhat weaker correlations to other, related measures support their convergent and discriminant validity. The results followed a similar pattern across the young adult subsample (N = 375, ages 18-39, M = 28.56).
Conclusions: These results indicate that the short forms of the tested scales may perform similarly to the full versions.
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Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11386377 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40337-024-01095-9 | DOI Listing |
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