Poster Presentation ANZOS-ASLM-ICCR 2019

Comparing two questionnaires for the assessment of emotional eating in people seeking treatment for obesity. (#184)

Lauren Stammers 1 , Lisa Wong 1 , Leonid Churilov 1 2 , Sarah Price 1 , Joseph Proietto 1 3 , Elif I. Ekinci 1 3 , Priya Sumithran 1 3
  1. Department of Medicine (Austin), University of Melbourne, Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia
  2. Melbourne Medical School, University of Melbourne , Parkville, Victoria, Australia
  3. Department of Endocrinology , Austin Health, Heidelberg Heights, Victoria, Australia

Background: Emotional eating may contribute to weight gain and difficulty with weight loss. Questionnaires are currently the primary method used to identify this behaviour, however there is no consensus on which questionnaire is most reliable for this purpose. This study aims to compare two questionnaires that are validated for identifying emotional eating in patients with overweight or obesity who are seeking weight loss. It was hypothesised that the agreement between questionnaires would not be substantial (kappa <0.6) as each questionnaire assesses different aspects of emotional eating.

Methods: Responses from 387 adult participants recruited from medical and surgical obesity management clinics at Austin Health 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 kappa scores.

Results: The median body mass index of participants was 42.1 kg/m2 (interquartile range 12.1 kg/m2), median age was 51.6 years (interquartile range 19.7 years) and 70.5% of participants were female. The EES and PEMS were found to have substantial agreement based on a score of 0.71 (95% CI 0.65-0.76). Agreement remained in the ‘substantial’ reference range when comparing responses from males (0.61 (95% CI 0.47-0.73)), females (0.73 (95% CI 0.67-0.79)) and post-bariatric surgery patients (0.72 (95% CI 0.62-0.82)) separately.

Conclusion: This substantial agreement suggests that the questionnaires are identifying respondents’ susceptibility for emotional eating with consistency. This agreement was maintained in subgroup analysis of sex and history of bariatric surgery. Therefore, the PEMS coping subscale may be preferred due to its shorter length and specificity to highly palatable food consumption. Developing a consensus on which tool best identifies emotional eating behaviour for use in future studies is important for furthering our understanding of drivers of eating with a view to developing a more individualised approach to obesity management.