COMPARISON OF DISORDERED EATING SCALES ON A HEALTHY POPULATION

Background and objectives: Since their publication, the Three Factor Eating Questionnaire and the Eating Attitude Test 26 (EAT 26) have become the most widely used psychometric tools identifying individual differences in eating attitudes in studies of human eating behaviour. In this context the objective of this work was to examine the association between TFEQ and EAT 26 in adults. Methods: In order to determine participants' eating behaviours, the eating attitude test 26 (EAT 26) and three factor eating questionnaire (TFEQ) were administered by intern dietitians. The TFEQ evaluates 3 dimensions of eating behavior: cognitive restriction (CR), uncontrolled eating (UE), and emotional eating (EE). The responses are measured on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (completely true) to 4 (completely false). Questions on socio-demographic characteristics were also included. The sample comprised 32 women and 14 men, ranged from 19 to 40 years. The questionnaires were analyzed with the statistical program SPSS. Results: According to EAT 26, 8.9% participants had eating disorder. The mean TFEQ score of the participants was 40.59±6.85. There was a significant difference between TFEQ total scores and TFEQ uncontrolled eating scores of participants with and without eating disorders (p