Concise Scale of Eating Attitudes

Abstract

The article presents the procedure for the construction of the Concise Scale of Eating Attitudes, which is intended for the study of attitudes towards nutrition in the social sciences. This novel tool is the result of research work on diagnosing eating attitudes, the source of which is an individual’s world view. The six-component structure of the scale was verified using confirmatory factor analysis (RMSEA = 0.059; CMIN/DF = 1.629; CFI = 0.929). Internal reliability of sub-scales was tested by calculating Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients: Factor 1 (anorectic attitude) - α = 0.779; Factor 2 (religious attitude) - α = 0.844; Factor 3 (vegetarian attitude) - α = 0.890; Factor 4 (hedonistic attitude) - α = 0.654; Factor 5 (orthorectic attitude) - α = 0.655; Factor 6 (experimental attitude) - α = 0.842. The result is a concise scale made up of six factors built using a total of 16 items. Criterion relevance was established on the basis of correlation with other tools measuring similar structures, including the Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (Polish adaptation of TFEQ-13), the Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (KZZJ), the Eating Preoccupation Scale (SZJ), and the Diet Self-Efficacy Scale (Polish adaptation of DIET-SE). Satisfactory psychometric properties were obtained based on a study involving 184 adults aged 18-35 years.