THE YALE-BROWN-CORNELL EATING DISORDER SCALE - DEVELOPMENT, USE, RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY

Patients with eating disorders present with a wide range of eating-rel ated preoccupations and/or rituals. Yet, eating disorder assessments t raditionally have measured a finite number of specific eating-disorder ed thoughts or actions. The current work presents a new instrument, th e Yale-Brown-Cornell Eating Disorder Scale (YBC-EDS), that does not li mit assessment to a particular set of eating-related concerns or behav iors. Rather, it assesses the severity of illness associated with an i ndividual's unique symptomatology. Reliability and validity of this ne w, clinician-rated instrument was tested in two independent samples of DSM-III-R eating disorder patients. The YBC-EDS eight-item scale asse ssing severity of preoccupations and rituals, and a set of six provisi onal items for assessing motivation for change were both frequently en dorsed and found to have excellent interrater reliability. Internal co nsistency was shown to be good for the set of eight core items and the set of six items related to motivation for change. The eight-item sca le demonstrated aspects of convergent validity with other assessments of eating disorder symptomatology. The set of six provisional items fo r assessing motivation for change was inversely related to measures to diet restriction, drive for thinness, and body dissatisfaction. This paper presents the eight-item Yale-Brown-Cornell Eating Disorder Scale for assessing illness severity in eating-disordered patients with an extensive range of symptomatology. An accompanying set of six provisio nal items for assessing motivation for change are also presented. Init ial findings showed excellent reliability and indications of validity for both the eight-item YBC-EDS and the set of six provisional items.