Development of the children's eating behaviour questionnaire

Individual differences in several aspects of eating style have been implica ted in the development of weight problems in children and adults, but there are presently no reliable and valid scales that assess a range of dimensio ns of eating style. This paper describes the development and preliminary va lidation of a parent-rated instrument to assess eight dimensions of eating style in children; the Children's Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (CEBQ). Co nstructs for inclusion were derived both from the existing literature on ea ting behaviour in children and adults, and from interviews with parents. Th ey included reponsiveness to food, enjoyment of food, satiety responsivenes s, slowness in eating, fussiness, emotional overeating, emotional undereati ng, and desire for drinks. A. large pool of items covering each of these: c onstructs was developed. The number of items was then successively culled t hrough analysis of responses from three samples of families of young childr en (N = 131; N = 187, N = 218), to produce a 35-item instrument with eight scales which were internally valid and had good test-retest reliability. In vestigation of variations by gender and age revealed only minimal gender di fferences in any aspect of eating style. Satiety responsiveness and slownes s in eating diminished from age 3 to 8. Enjoyment of food and food responsi veness increased over this age range. The CEBQ should provide a useful meas ure of eating style for research into the early precursors of obesity or ea ting disorders. This is especially important in relation to the growing evi dence for the heritability of obesity, where good measurement of the associ ated behavioural phenotype will be crucial in investigating the contributio n of inherited variations in eating behaviour to the process of weight gain .