Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Silesia in Katowice, Bankowa 12, 40-007 Katowice, Poland.
Eating Behavior Laboratory (EAT Lab), Institute of Psychology, University of Wrocław, 50-527 Wrocław, Poland.
Nutrients. 2022 Sep 28;14(19):4041. doi: 10.3390/nu14194041.
The Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) is the most commonly used scale for measuring food addiction (FA). The previous approach to the YFAS and its subsequent versions assumed dichotomization of items, separating addiction symptoms and clinical significance items, and factorial validity testing on a subset of items. In this paper, we discuss the drawbacks associated with these procedures. In addition, we present a different analytical approach to investigate the validity of the modified YFAS (mYFAS) along with an alternative scoring method that overcomes limitations related to the previous approach. After establishing the structure of the mYFAS, we investigated the potential antecedents and consequences of FA separately for men and women. The sample consisted of 1182 Polish undergraduate students (613 women, 559 men, 10 missing values on gender) with a mean age of 20.33 years ( = 1.68; range: 18-36). They were asked to complete self-report questionnaires measuring FA, personality traits (Big Five), self-esteem, narcissism, self-efficacy, social anxiety, loneliness, and well-being indicators. Due to the low content, factorial, and clinical validity, the first three items were excluded from the Polish version of the mYFAS. The six-item mYFAS demonstrated measurement invariance, allowing for meaningful comparisons between genders and yielded almost identical prevalence rates for men and women. The hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that, narcissism, and social anxiety predicted FA in both genders, whereas important gender differences in antecedents were also noted. In addition, FA was associated with body mass index (BMI) and most of the well-being indicators, even after controlling for relevant variables. The findings suggest that our modified analytical approach allows researchers to measure FA using a valid, useful, and simple tool.
耶鲁食物成瘾量表（Yale Food Addiction Scale，YFAS）是衡量食物成瘾（FA）最常用的量表。之前对 YFAS 及其后续版本的方法假设项目的二分法，将成瘾症状和临床意义项目分开，并对项目的子集进行因子有效性测试。在本文中，我们讨论了这些程序的缺点。此外，我们提出了一种不同的分析方法来研究修改后的 YFAS（mYFAS）的有效性，以及一种克服与之前方法相关的限制的替代评分方法。在确定 mYFAS 的结构后，我们分别对男性和女性进行了 FA 的潜在前因和后果的研究。该样本由 1182 名波兰大学生组成（613 名女性，559 名男性，10 名性别缺失值），平均年龄为 20.33 岁（=1.68；范围：18-36）。他们被要求完成自我报告问卷，测量食物成瘾、人格特质（大五人格）、自尊、自恋、自我效能感、社交焦虑、孤独感和幸福感指标。由于内容、因子和临床有效性较低，前三个项目被排除在波兰版 mYFAS 之外。六项目 mYFAS 具有测量不变性，允许在性别之间进行有意义的比较，并得出男女几乎相同的流行率。分层多元回归分析表明，自恋和社交焦虑在两性中都预测了 FA，同时也注意到了重要的性别差异。此外，即使在控制了相关变量后，FA 仍与身体质量指数（BMI）和大多数幸福感指标相关。研究结果表明，我们修改后的分析方法允许研究人员使用有效、有用和简单的工具来衡量 FA。
