Abstract
This article describes details of the development and psychometric characteristics of a brief self-report inventory for assessing attitudes and behaviors symptomatic of eating disorders that is currently in use in a longitudinal study of over 700 families with 11-year-old or 17-year-old twin girls. The Minnesota Eating Behavior Survey (MEBS), formerly the Minnesota Eating Disorder Inventory, is a 30-item measure developed for use with children as young as 10 years as well as adults. An examination of the MEBS's psychometric properties in a large, community sample of girls, women, and men demonstrated good factor congruence, internal consistency reliability, three-year stability, as well as evidence of concurrent and criterion validity. This questionnaire has promise as a screening and assessment measure for eating disturbance in cross-sectional and longitudinal research involving individuals of a wide range of ages.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 373-392 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | Eating Behaviors |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2005 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The Minnesota Twin Family Study, an ongoing project conducted at the Department of Psychology of the University of Minnesota, is supported by grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (AA 09367) and National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA 05147). Kristin von Ranson presented portions of earlier versions of this research at the 7th International Conference on Eating Disorders, New York, April 1996; the Eating Disorders Research Society, San Diego, CA, November 1999; and the 8th Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence, Chicago, IL; March 2000. We thank the twins and parents for their participation in the MTFS.
Keywords
- Anorexia nervosa
- Bulimia
- Questionnaires
- Symptoms
- Test construction
- Test validity