Faculty of Psychology, Department of Health Psychology and Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Paris-Lodron-University of Salzburg, Hellbrunner Str. 34, 5020, Salzburg, Austria.
Department of Psychosomatics, University Hospital Basel, Hebelstr. 2, 4056, Basel, Switzerland.
Eat Weight Disord. 2023 Sep 13;28(1):74. doi: 10.1007/s40519-023-01606-8.
Emotional eating (EE) refers to eating in response to (negative) emotions. Evidence for the validity of EE is mixed: some meta-analyses find EE only in eating disordered patients, others only in restrained eaters, which suggest that only certain subgroups show EE. Furthermore, EE measures from lab-based assessments, ecological momentary assessment (EMA), and psychometric measures often diverge. This paper tested whether the covariance of these three different EE methods can be modeled through a single latent variable (factorial validity), and if so, how this variable would relate to restrained eating (construct validity), Body-Mass-Index (BMI), and subclinical eating disorder symptomatology (concurrent validity).
102 non-eating disordered female participants with a wide BMI range completed EE measures from three methods: psychometric questionnaires, a laboratory experiment (craving ratings of food images in induced neutral vs. negative emotion) and EMA questionnaires (within-participant correlations of momentary negative emotions and momentary food cravings across 9 days). Two measures for each method were extracted and submitted to confirmatory factor analysis.
A one-factor model provided a good fit. The resulting EE factor correlated positively with subclinical eating disorder symptoms and BMI but not with restrained eating.
The one-factor solution shows that the EE construct can validly be assessed with three different methods. Individual differences in EE are supported by the data and are related to eating and weight problem symptomatology but not to restrained eating. This supports learning accounts of EE and underscores the relevance of the EE construct to physical and mental health.
II (Evidence obtained from well-designed controlled trials without randomization).
情绪性进食（EE）是指对（负面）情绪做出的进食反应。关于 EE 的有效性的证据存在差异：一些荟萃分析仅在饮食失调患者中发现 EE，而另一些则仅在节食者中发现 EE，这表明只有某些亚组表现出 EE。此外，实验室评估、生态瞬时评估（EMA）和心理测量学测量中的 EE 测量方法往往存在差异。本文测试了这三种不同的 EE 方法的协方差是否可以通过单个潜在变量进行建模（因子有效性），如果可以，那么这个变量将如何与节食（构念有效性）、体重指数（BMI）和亚临床饮食障碍症状（同时有效性）相关。
102 名非饮食失调的女性参与者，BMI 范围广泛，完成了三种方法的 EE 测量：心理测量问卷、实验室实验（在诱导的中性和负面情绪下对食物图像的渴望评分）和 EMA 问卷（在 9 天内对瞬时负面情绪和瞬时食物渴望的个体内相关性）。每种方法提取两个测量值，并提交给验证性因子分析。
一个单因素模型提供了很好的拟合。得出的 EE 因子与亚临床饮食障碍症状和 BMI 呈正相关，但与节食无关。
单因素解决方案表明，可以使用三种不同的方法有效地评估 EE 结构。EE 的个体差异得到了数据的支持，并且与饮食和体重问题症状有关，但与节食无关。这支持了 EE 的学习理论，并强调了 EE 结构与身心健康的相关性。
II（没有随机分组的精心设计的对照试验获得的证据）。
