Food and Eating Addiction: Severe Forms of Uncontrolled Eating? Examining an Extension of a Continuum Model

Date
2017
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Abstract
This study examined the fit of a continuum model of uncontrolled eating as extended to measures of food and eating addiction, and investigated associations of these constructs with clinical impairment. Participants were 544 adults recruited through an online crowdsourcing tool, and 358 students. We tested the fit of structural equation models depicting a continuum of uncontrolled eating, and examined relationships among self-report measures of food and eating addiction, emotional eating, power of food, binge eating, and clinical impairment. Results supported the convergent validity of food and eating addiction measures with measures of theoretically similar forms of eating pathology. Food addiction demonstrated incremental validity in explaining clinical impairment above the general uncontrolled eating factor in both samples, and was equivalently associated with all types of impairment. Eating addiction was more strongly associated with personal (i.e., emotional) impairment, but did not account for variance in impairment beyond the general uncontrolled eating factor.
Description
Keywords
Psychology--Clinical
Citation
Lacroix, E. (2017). Food and Eating Addiction: Severe Forms of Uncontrolled Eating? Examining an Extension of a Continuum Model (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/26202