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Comparison of two questionnaires for assessment of emotional eating in people undergoing treatment for obesity

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Eating and Weight Disorders - Studies on Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

Emotional eating may contribute to weight gain and difficulty with weight loss. Questionnaires are currently the primary method used to identify this behaviour but there is no gold standard for detecting emotional eating, making it difficult to know which questionnaire to use for this purpose. This study assesses two questionnaires validated for assessment of emotional eating in patients with obesity, with the aim of investigating their interchangeability in the clinical setting.

Methods

387 adult participants were recruited from the obesity treatment service at a tertiary metropolitan hospital. Responses were obtained for the 25-item Emotional Eating Scale (EES) and the 4-item coping subscale of the Palatable Eating Motives Scale (PEMS). Agreement was analysed using quadratically weighted Cohen’s κ scores. Substantial agreement was defined as κ 0.61–0.80.

Results

The median (interquartile range) body mass index and age of participants was 42.1 kg/m2 (36.4–48.9 kg/m2) and 51.6 years (41.1–61.4 years), respectively, and 70.5% of participants were female. The EES and PEMS were found to have substantial agreement (κ 0.71; 95% CI 0.65–0.76). Agreement remained substantial when analysing responses from men (0.61; 95% CI 0.47–0.73), women (0.73; 95% CI 0.67–0.79) and post-bariatric surgery patients (0.72; 95% CI 0.62–0.82) separately.

Conclusion

Despite focusing on different elements of emotional eating behaviour, the substantial agreement between the EES and PEMS coping subscale suggests that they identify respondents’ susceptibility to emotional eating with consistency, including in people who have undergone bariatric surgery.

Level V

Opinions of respected authorities, based on descriptive studies, narrative reviews, clinical experience, or reports of expert committees.

Clinical trial registration

This observational study has not been registered as a clinical trial.

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Abbreviations

PEMS:

Palatable Eating Motives Scale

EES:

Emotional Eating Scale

DEBQ:

Dutch Eating Behavioural Questionnaire

TFEQ:

Three Factor Eating Questionnaire

BMI:

Body mass index

IQR:

Interquartile range

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Funding

This study did not receive any specific funding. PS is supported by a David Bickart Clinical Research Fellowship from the University of Melbourne and an Investigator Grant (1178482) from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine (Austin Health), University of Melbourne, 145 Studley Road, Heidelberg, VIC, Australia

    Lauren Stammers, Lisa Wong, Leonid Churilov, Sarah Price, Elif Ekinci & Priya Sumithran

  2. Department of Endocrinology, Austin Health, 300 Waterdale Road, Heidelberg Heights, VIC, 3081, Australia

    Lauren Stammers, Lisa Wong, Elif Ekinci & Priya Sumithran

Authors
  1. Lauren Stammers
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  2. Lisa Wong
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  3. Leonid Churilov
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  4. Sarah Price
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  6. Priya Sumithran
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Contributions

LS, LC and PS designed this analysis, LS and LW collected data, LS and LC conducted the analyses, LS wrote the first draft of the paper, all authors reviewed and revised the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Priya Sumithran.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Not applicable.

Ethics approval

The questionnaire and methodology for this study was approved by the Austin Health Human Research Ethics Committee.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Stammers, L., Wong, L., Churilov, L. et al. Comparison of two questionnaires for assessment of emotional eating in people undergoing treatment for obesity. Eat Weight Disord 26, 2353–2360 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-020-01084-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-020-01084-2

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