The Validity of the Eating Disorder Examination and its Subscales

TLDR

The Eating Disorder Examination (EDE) is a semistructured interview designed to assess the specific psychopathology of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. The study aimed to establish the EDE’s discriminant validity by administering it to 100 patients with anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa and 42 controls. The authors administered the EDE to the patient and control groups, derived five theoretically grounded subscales, and evaluated these subscales across the two populations. Patients differed significantly from controls on all EDE items, the subscales showed satisfactory internal consistency (α coefficients), and the EDE offers clinicians and researchers a comprehensive psychopathological profile of eating disorder patients.

Abstract

The EDE is a semistructured interview which has been developed as a measure of the specific psychopathology of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. To establish its discriminant validity it was administered to 100 patients with anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa and to 42 controls. The two groups differed significantly on all items. Five subscales were derived on rational grounds and evaluated on the two populations. The α coefficients for each subscale indicated a satisfactory degree of internal consistency. The EDE provides clinicians and research workers with a detailed and comprehensive profile of the psychopathological features of patients with eating disorders.