42 found validity evidence for the EAT-26 in a population of 207 female athletes with convergent validity coefficients reported at r = 0.18–0.88 when evaluated alongside the EDI-2 and internal consistency reliability coefficients (α) reported ranging from 0.70 to 0.88. The r-value
of 0.18 reported in the study was a product of the ability of the EAT-26 to look at others’ perceptions of an individual’s eating behaviors when the EAT-26 was compared to the EDI. The EDI does not assess others’ perceptions of eating, leading to the low r-value. 42 However, the preceding results regarding the convergent validity between the EAT-26 and EDI demonstrate very little common variance between the two measures in assessing others’ perceptions of eating behaviors, Angiogenesis inhibitor pointing to check details the need for validation via other statistical methods besides convergent validity. Additionally, evidence for the validity of the QEDD has also been found with an athlete population in three separate studies.
Petrie et al.4 and 6 examined ED with the QEDD in a population of 199 and 203 male athletes from both team and individual sports, respectively. Sanford-Martens et al.7 also found evidence of the validity of the QEDD when studying a combined sample of 325 male and female athletes (159 females, 166 males). Between the three studies, convergent validity coefficients for the QEDD were r = −0.51–0.70 with internal consistency reliability coefficients reported at α = 0.87. The negative r-value is expected because Rolziracetam it was obtained through correlating a subscale within QEDD that assesses body satisfaction with BULIT-R, 4 indicating athletes with higher body satisfaction were less likely to have bulimic tendencies. Given the QEDD assesses the degree of both bulimic and anorexic
behaviors and demonstrated moderate to good validity and good reliability in both male and female athletes, the QEDD appears best equipped to gauge ED in athletes of both genders. Once again, the studies researchers cite are most often the validation studies conducted with non-athlete populations. In this accord, one needs to question the accuracy of the measure with athlete populations.31 As stated above, only Doninger et al.,42 Petrie et al.,4 and 6 and Sanford-Martens et al.7 have found validity evidence for two of the five most commonly used eating disorder measures (EAT, EDI, QEDD, BULIT-R, and EDE-Q), specifically the EAT and QEDD. Because questionnaires developed specifically for athletes (i.e., WPSS-MA, AQ, and AMDQ) are used much less frequently than the EAT, EDI, QEDD, BULIT-R, and EDE-Q among the literature, calculating, and reporting the validity and reliability coefficients of the EAT, EDI, QEDD, BULIT-R, and EDE-Q with athlete populations is needed. The results of this review indicate studies that did calculate validity and reliability coefficients for the eating disorder assessment used to observe athletes did so with traditional psychometrical/statistical methods (e.g.