Eating attitudes are defined as beliefs, thoughts, feelings, behaviors and relationship with food. They could influence people's food choices and their health status. Objective: This study aimed to adapt from Portuguese to English the Disordered Eating Attitude Scale (DEAS) and evaluate its validity and reliability. The original scale in Portuguese was translated and adapted into English and was applied to female university students of University of Minnesota—USA (n = 224). Internal consistency was determined (Cronbach's Alpha). Convergent validity was assessed by correlations between Eating Attitude Test-26 (EAT-26) and Restrain Scale (RS). Reliability was evaluated applying twice the scale to a sub-sample (n = 30). The scale was back translated into Portuguese and compared with the original version and discrepancies were not found. The internal consistency was .76. The DEAS total score was significantly associated with EAT-26 (r = 0.65) and RS (r = 0.69) scores. The correlation between test–retest was r = 0.9. The English version of DEAS showed appropriate internal consistency, convergent validity and test–retest reliability and will be useful to assess eating attitudes in different population groups in English spoken countries.
Eating attitudes measurement can be useful to understand people's relationship with food and their associated behavioral choices. It is believed that different attitudes toward food may have an effect on overall health and contribute to cultural differences in non-transmissible diseases (Roininen et al., 2001 and Rozin et al., 1999). Therefore, assessing eating attitudes can be helpful in the psychology and nutrition fields.
The assessment of eating attitudes is done traditionally in the field of eating disorders (ED) with questionnaires developed with focus on ED symptoms (Garner et al., 1982, Garner et al., 1983, Herman and Mack, 1975, Stunkard and Messick, 1985 and Van Strien et al., 1986). Besides these instruments, others evaluate eating attitudes outside the ED scenario and all of them focus on specific points of eating attitudes but they do not focus on general feelings, beliefs about food and eating, and people's relationship with food (Aikman et al., 2006, Bell and Marshall, 2003, Martins and Pliner, 1998, Pliner and Hobden, 1992 and Steptoe et al., 1995). Therefore, Alvarenga, Scagliusi and Philippi (2010) developed the Disordered Eating Attitude Scale (DEAS), using eating attitudes as a construct involving beliefs, thoughts, feelings, behaviors and relationship with food. This scale could be used for evaluation of clinical and non-clinical populations since many people experience distorted eating habits, beliefs and feelings toward food. The original scale was evaluated psychometrically and considered cohesive and valid (Alvarenga et al., 2010).
Since the scale was developed and evaluated in Portuguese, it will be important to evaluate its psychometric properties in other languages in order to perform comparative studies in different countries, cultures, groups, ethnicities, age groups or clinical populations. The objective of this study was to translate the DEAS from Portuguese to English and assess its internal consistency, convergent validity and test–retest reliability.
