The Eating Disorder Diagnostic Scale: Psychometric Features Within a Clinical Population and a Cut-off Point to Differentiate Clinical Patients from Healthy Controls

The Eating Disorder Diagnostic Scale (EDDS) is a brief self-report measure for diagnosing anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. Research has provided evidence of the reliability and validity of this scale in non-clinical populations. Our study is the first to examine the psychometric features of the EDDS in a clinical population of eating disordered patients. We identified a cut-off point that differentiates clinical patients from healthy controls. A clinical group of 59 Dutch female eating disordered patients and a control group of 45 Dutch students completed the EDDS, the Eating Disorder Examination Interview, the Body Attitude Test and the Beck Depression InventoryII. The EDDS showed good testretest reliability, internal consistency, criterion validity and convergent validity with other scales assessing eating and general pathology. An overall symptom composite cut-off score of 16.5 accurately distinguished clinical patients from healthy controls. The EDDS may be a useful instrument in clinical settings and in aetiologic, prevention and treatment research. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.