Validation d'une échelle d'attitudes alimentaires auprès d'une population québécoise francophone

TLDR

The Eating Attitudes Test (EAT‑26) is a widely used screening tool for anorexia and bulimia, but its French version had not yet been validated. The authors translated the EAT‑26 into French and administered it to both anglophone and francophone students and patients. The French version exhibited psychometric properties equivalent to the English version, accurately distinguishing patients from non‑patients and showing comparable internal consistency, with similar prevalence rates (~14 %) among female high‑school students in both linguistic groups.

Abstract

The Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26) is one of the most frequently used screening questionnaires for anorexia and bulimia nervosa for use with clinical and general populations. Although the psychometric qualities of the instrument have been reported for the English version, little has been done to date to validate a French version. A french version of the EAT-26 was distributed to anglophone students and francophone students, as well as anglophone and francophone patients. Overall, the results demonstrated that the authors' French version has the same psychometric characteristics as the English version when used with clinical and non clinical populations. The overall test and its subscales differentiated between patients and non patients similarly in both linguistic groups. The internal consistency of the two versions, as assessed by Cronbach's alpha, was comparable. Among female high-school students, 14.1% of the anglophone students and 14.3% of the francophone students scored above the cutoff score for significant eating disorders behaviour.