Psychometric properties of the Chinese version of weight related eating beahviour questionnaire (WREQ)

Abstract

Purpose: Psychological aspects of eating behavior, such as external eating, emotional eating and dietary restraint are posited to be associated with overeating and obesity. However, no appropriate instrument was available for Chinese populations. This study aimed to translate and transculturally adapt a weight-related eating questionnaire (WREQC) for assessing the psychological aspects of eating behaviour in Chinese adults and evaluate its psychometric properties. Methods: The WREQ is a 16-item self-reported instrument that measures external eating, emotional eating, routine restraint and compensatory restraint. It was translated, adapted, and administered to 970 Chinese adults (mean age 32.2, SD 13.4) as an online survey. The structural validity was examined using confirmatory factor analysis and internal consistency was assessed at subscale levels by Cronbach’s α coefficient. The Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (DEBQ) was used as a reference standard for convergent validity. Test-retest reliability was done at a 2-week interval (n=30). Linear regression was used to examine the associations of the WREQ-C subscale scores with body mass index (BMI) and gender. Results: The proposed 4-factor structure for the WREQ was appropriate for the Chinese population (CFI=0.96, SRMR=0.04 and RMSEA=0.06) and demonstrated satisfactory internal consistency of 0.75 for routine restraint, 0.78 for compensatory restraint, 0.78 for external eating and 0.90 for emotional eating. The correlation between the corresponding WREQ-C subscales and DEBQ ranged from 0.63 to 0.81 (P<0.001). The WREQ demonstrated moderate to good test–retest reliability with intraclass correlations of 0.76 to 0.89 (P<0.001). Females reported higher scores of dietary restraint, emotional eating and external eating than male (P<0.05). Routine restraint (β=0.13, P=0.004), external eating (β=0.12, P<0.001) and emotional eating (β=0.12, P<0.001) scores were positively associated with the BMI whereas compensatory restraint score (β=-0.09, P=0.03) was negatively associated with BMI. Conclusion: The 16-item WREQ-C demonstrated to be a reliable and valid measure for assessing external eating, emotional eating, routine restraint and compensatory restraint in Chinese adults.