EATING DISORDER INVENTORY-2: Validation of a German-language version with norms for male and female adolescents

The EDI-2 (Garner 1991) is the revised version of the Eating Disorder Inventory (Garner & Olmsted 1984) including three additional scales (Asceticism, Impulse Regulation, and Social Insecurity) with 27 items. A German version is now presented alongside normative and reliability data derived from a consecutive adolescent anorexia nervosa sample (n = 40) and a population based Austrian control sample of 1660 subjects (1080 girls, 580 boys aged 10-20 years). All scales except maturity fears showed significant differences between patients, female, and male comparisons. Norms for Austrian female and male adolescents in three different age groups (10-13, 13-16, and 16-20 years) are presented. Their similarity to US norms underlines the globalization of these constructs in adolescents. Most scales were weight and/or age dependent. In females, bulimia, drive for thinness, body dissatisfaction, and ineffectivity subscale scores increase with weight. Maturity fears, ineffectivity, social insecurity, and asceticism decrease with age, whereas body dissatisfaction increases. Drive for thinness in the youngest female age group was as high as in the older ones. Although item analysis showed satisfactory reliability and inter-item correlations of most of the items for all scales except asceticism, the addition of the three new scares did not enhance reliability of the test. Thus, when brevity of screening instrument is important, we recommend that only the eight original scales are used.