English and Spanish versions of the Body Shape Questionnaire: Measurement equivalence across ethnicity and clinical status

Abstract

We evaluated the psychometric properties and measurement equivalence of various forms of the Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ) (Cooper et al., Int J Eat Disord, 6, 485-494, 1987) in American and Spanish women with and without an eating disorder diagnosis. Participants included four groups of women: Euro-American (n = 505), Hispanic-American (n = 151), and Spanish (n = 445) females without an eating disorder and Spanish women being treated for an eating disorder (n = 177). Single and multigroup confirmatory factor analyses using maximum likelihood estimation with robust standard errors tested the data for configural and metric invariance. Goodness-of-fit statistics indicated that the original and all alternate forms of the BSQ fit the data well across groups. Most factor loadings were similar across groups. We also developed a 10-item version that appeared to be invariant across groups. Results strongly support configural invariance and offer some support for metric invariance.