SENSITIVITY, SPECIFICITY, AND POSITIVE PREDICTIVE VALUE AS MEASURES OF PREDICTION ACCURACY - THE CASE OF THE EAT-26

Recently, investigators have identified several levels of severity amo ng people suffering from eating disorders. One of the more commonly us ed scales for screening people with eating disorders is the 26-item ve rsion of the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26). Although decisions such a s assigning individuals to treatment and control groups are often dete rmined by the score on the EAT-26, researchers have not examined the s ensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive value of the scale. I n the present study, 231 female soldiers from a sample of 1,112 were i nterviewed and studied so as to determine the accuracy of decisions ba sed on the EAT-26. Findings showed that the scale does poorly in ident ifying the most severe cases of eating disorders, but is better in ide ntifying the milder case. The implications of the findings are discuss ed.