Psychometric data of the abbreviated version of IMAGEN questionnaire; evaluation of body dissatisfaction

Introduction and objectives: Body dissatisfaction seems to be associated with eating disorders, obesity, decreasing levels of physical activity and fruit and vegetable consumption. In this study the psychometric properties of a questionnaire to measure body dissatisfaction, the IMAGEN questionnaire, have been obtained. Method: The samples have been composed of 538 women of ages between 11 and 22 years, 494 out from different schools and 44 out diagnosed of eating disorder from hospital. Results: The confirmatory factor analysis reduces the items from 38 in the original version to 25. The model shows a penta-factor structure: a) emotional, with five items; b) fear to gain weight, with four; c) approach to change, with three; d) perceptive, with six; and e) behavioral, with four items. Besides, it has been obtained a second order factor (cognitive-emotional) that includes the a), b) and c) previous factors. The psychometric properties such as internal consistency (alpha from 0.84 to 0.92), discriminative validity (significant difference by group) and convergent validity (significant statistical relation between IMAGE and EDI-2 factors) have been evaluated and some acceptable results have been obtained. In addition to that, the cut-offs for each questionnaire scale were established, implying that high scores in body dissatisfaction are associated with having an eating disorder. The most accurate estimates correspond to the behavioral factor of dissatisfaction (odds ratio 33.2; IC 95% = 15.1-68.3). Conclusion: From these results it is concluded that the reduced IMAGE questionnaire presents good psychometric properties. However, more research is needed with different samples before generalizing its use.