Psychometric Properties of the Eating Attitudes Test

The study was designed to examine the construct validity and internal consistency reliability of the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT) using a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Two widely adopted EAT models were tested: three-factor (Dieting, Bulimia and Food Preoccupation, and Oral Control) with 26 items (Garner, Olmsted, Bohr, & Garfinkel, 1982), and four-factor (Dieting, Oral Control, Awareness of Food Contents, and Food Preoccupation) with 20 items (Koslowsky et al., 1992). Research participants included two samples of female college students (calibration N = 785, cross-validation N = 298). Maximum Likelihood estimation method was adopted. The fit indexes from the three-factor EAT-26 represented unacceptable model fit (RMSEA = .11, SRMR = .11, CFI = .73, AGFI = .74). Similarly, the fit indexes from the four-factor EAT-20 model provided a poor fit (RMSEA = .09, SRMR = .07, CFI = .85, AGFI = .83); however, after eliminating four items with low factor loadings, the four-factor EAT model with 16 items was found to have an acceptable fit (RMSEA = .08, SRMR =.05, CFI =.91, AGFI =.88). The EAT-16 model was then cross-validated on an independent sample and was found to have acceptable configural and metric invariance as well as internal consistency reliability.