📝 What is it?
The Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) is a widely-used and well-validated measure that assesses the range, frequency, and severity of disordered eating.
It is adapted from the Eating Disorder Examination (EDE) which is a widely-used semi-structured clinician interview. The EDE-Q is basically the EDE in self-report format.
It contains 28 questions that ask about frequency of behavior and the client's perception of their behavior and typically takes 7-11 minutes to complete.
📸 Sample screenshot:
🍖 What are eating disorders?
Eating disorders are a group of psychological diagnoses that involve unhealthy eating habits. Common symptoms include unusual behavior with food or preoccupation with body weight or shape. The most well-known eating disorders include Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, and Binge Eating Disorder. Others include Pica, Rumination Disorder, and Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID). For more information on these eating disorders, check out this link from the APA.
Three most well-known: Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, and Binge Eating Disorder
Anorexia Nervosa (AN) or just Anorexia is probably the most well-known eating disorder. Two of the distinguishing features of AN is that 1) the person believes they are overweight even if they are severely underweight and 2) the person restricts their food intake. These individuals usually fear of gaining weight, relentlessly pursue thinness, and have a distorted body image. There are many serious health concerns connected to anorexia, most notably suicide and death.
Bulimia Nervosa (BN) or simply Bulimia is another well-known eating disorder. The distinguishing behaviors of BN are consuming unusually large amounts of food (binging) PLUS some sort of compensatory behavior. Compensatory behaviors may be forced vomiting, taking laxatives, or excessively exercising. Binging happens when a person can't control or can't stop their eating. This most commonly occurs with unhealthy foods the person would normally avoid. There are many health concerns connected with BN including sore throat and tooth decay for those that use vomiting as a compensatory behavior as well as irritation of the gut and dehydration.
Binge eating disorder occurs in individuals who binge (eat unusually large amounts of food in a short period of time) and do not typically perform any restricting or compensatory behaviors as seen in AN or BN. Feeling distress, shame, or disgust when thinking about their eating behavior is common. Being overweight or obese is also common which is linked to many negative health concerns including heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.
Can cause serious mental and physical health issues and even result in death.
Most commonly seen in adolescent and young women.
Seem to be caused by a combination of genetics, personality traits (perfectionism, impulsivity), culture (media ideals for attractive bodies), and even biology.
📉 Scoring:
The EDE-Q contains 28 questions each with 7 answer options. A total sum score of 88 or greater is associated with a "clinically significant" score in respect to disordered eating. A mean subscale score of 4 or greater is clinically significant within that domain, with a max of 6. The table below provides percentile ranks for the subscale scores. As can be seen towards the bottom of the table, using the 90th percentile as an example, it is more common for women to score higher on Weight Concern (4.00) and Shape Concern (4.75) as opposed to Eating Concern (2.40).
ℹ️ Summary:
Focus area: Eating Disorders
Overview: The Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) is a well-established measure designed to assess eating disorder psychopathology, and is derived from the Eating Disorder Examination (EDE) interview. Numerous studies have confirmed a high level of agreement between the EDE-Q and EDE in measuring core characteristics of eating disorders in community and clinical samples. The EDE-Q is used for both research and clinical purposes, and is a relatively brief and cost-efficient assessment of eating disorder psychopathology.
Total number of items: 28
Administration: Self-report
Standardized cadence: Monthly
Estimated completion time: 7-11 minutes
Supported subscales: Restraint, Eating Concern, Shape Concern, and Weight Concern
Age range: 18+
Scoring and interpretation: Total composite score clinical cutoff = 88. Subscale mean score cutoff = 4.
Reliability/Validity: Test-retest reliability was good to excellent (0.66-0.83) for global and subscale scores, and for items assessing key behavioral features of eating disorders (0.55-0.91). Patients with an eating disorder displayed significantly higher EDE-Q scores than controls, demonstrating the good criterion validity of the tool.
Additional information: The EDE-Q is one of the most comprehensive self-report measures of eating disorder psychopathology. It is a wonderful tool to support diagnostic decision making among patients with suspected eating disorder symptoms.