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. 2025 Jun 19;13(1):118.
doi: 10.1186/s40337-025-01293-z.

Validation of the parent version of the eating disorder examination-questionnaire adapted for children in parent-child dyads with children with and without loss of control eating

Caroline Lange  1 , Ricarda Schmidt  1   2 , Anja Hilbert  3   4
Affiliations

Validation of the parent version of the eating disorder examination-questionnaire adapted for children in parent-child dyads with children with and without loss of control eating

Caroline Lange et al. J Eat Disord. .

Abstract

Background: This study validated a parent-report version of the Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire adapted for Children (ChEDE-Q), referred to as the ChEDE-QP, within a population-based sample of parent-child dyads, including both children with and without loss of control (LOC) eating.

Method: The ChEDE-QP was completed by 115 parent-child dyads. Item characteristics, reliability, factor structure, discriminant, convergent, and criterion validity were evaluated. The child version of the Eating Disorder Examination (ChEDE) interview and the ChEDE-Q were used for validation.

Results: Missing item responses occurred in 0-4% of items. Corrected item-subscale correlations were mostly sufficient. Internal consistency ranged from acceptable to excellent. Medium-sized correlations between ChEDE-QP, ChEDE-Q and ChEDE global and subscale scores indicated satisfying convergent validity. Nonsignificant differences between children with and without LOC indicated low discriminant validity. Regarding the presence of LOC eating, parental and child reports were poorly associated.

Discussion: The ChEDE-QP was found to be a reliable questionnaire for assessing children's eating disorder psychopathology, indicating that parents are helpful for gaining a general understanding of eating disorder psychopathology. However, the agreement on the presence of LOC eating between parents and children was low indicating that the ChEDE-QP should not be used for assessing LOC eating episodes in the absence of child report.

Keywords: Assessment; Binge eating; ChEDE-Q; Eating disorder; Loss of control eating; Parent; Psychometric properties; Validation.

Plain language summary

This study tested a new parent-report questionnaire, the Parent Version of the Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire adapted for Children (ChEDE-QP). The aim was to help understand children’s eating behaviors. We asked 115 parents to complete the questionnaire, including parents whose children reported loss of control eating and healthy controls. Overall, the ChEDE-QP worked well: it reliably showed whether children had certain eating problems, and it had a high agreement with children’s own responses to questions about eating. However, the ChEDE-QP did not always pick up when a child experienced loss of control eating. This means that while the ChEDE-QP can be useful for getting an overall picture of a child’s eating behavior, parents alone may not always recognize moments when their child loses control of their eating. For that, the child’s own point of view remains essential.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval and consent to participate: This study was approved by the ethics committee of the German Psychological Society. Written informed consent was provided by participating parents and assent was given by children prior to study participation. Consent for publication: Not applicable. Competing interests: Dr. Hilbert reports receiving research grants from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Innovation Fund, and the Roland Ernst Foundation for Health Care; royalties for books on the treatment of eating disorders and obesity from Hogrefe and Kohlhammer; honoraria for workshops and lectures on eating disorders and obesity (e.g., from Lilly); honoraria as editor of the International Journal of Eating Disorders and the journal Psychotherapeut; honoraria as a reviewer from Oxford University Press and the German Society for Nutrition; and honoraria as a consultant for Takeda. No other competing interests were declared.

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