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Intuitive Eating Scale-2: psychometric properties and clinical norms among individuals seeking treatment for an eating disorder in private practice

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A Correction to this article was published on 12 January 2022

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Abstract

Purpose

Intuitive Eating (IE) is an approach to eating designed to facilitate a positive relationship with food. Its use in clinical settings and in the community is rapidly growing in popularity. The Intuitive Eating Scale 2 (IES-2) is a widely used measure that indexes intuitive eating motivations and behaviour, however evidence of its validity in populations with clinical eating disorders remains scarce. The objective of the proposed study was thus to evaluate the factor structure of the IES-2 in a large sample of individuals seeking treatment for eating disorders in private practice.

Methods

Data collected from 569 women and men aged 12–68 years seeking treatment for an eating disorder in one of eight specialist private outpatient eating disorder clinics were examined using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Relationships between IES-2 scores and measures of psychopathology were also examined.

Results

Results were relatively consistent with the purported four-factor structure of the IES-2. The measure displayed strong construct validity and good internal consistency. Scores on the IES-2 were inversely associated with scores of depression, anxiety, and disordered eating, providing evidence for divergent validity of the measure. Clinical norms are provided for anorexia nervosa (AN) spectrum disorders and bulimia nervosa (BN) spectrum disorders, as well as for the clinical sample as a whole.

Conclusion

Findings suggest that the IES-2 may be an appropriate measure for evaluating behaviours relating to IE in community outpatient eating disorder settings, and provide further evidence for the association between IE and positive health outcomes.

Level of evidence

III, evidence obtained from well-designed cohort or case–control analytic studies.

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Availability of data and material

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.

Code availability

The code created and used in this study are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.

Change history

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to warmly thank Jack Tame for his support in managing and preparing the dataset for use; and all the clinicians, administration staff and clients at the clinics where the data were collected.

Funding

The present research did not receive any specific grants from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. General Practice and Primary Healthcare, School of Population Health, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand

    Katie M. Babbott & Marion Roberts

  2. Translational Health Research Institute, School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia

    Deborah Mitchison

  3. Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Deborah Mitchison & Chris Basten

  4. The Redleaf Practice, Sydney, Australia

    Chris Thornton

  5. Mandy Goldstein Psychology, Sydney, Australia

    Mandy Goldstein

  6. School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, Campbelltown, Australia

    Phillipa Hay, Mandy Goldstein & Gabriella Heruc

  7. Appetite for Change, Sydney, Australia

    Gabriella Heruc

  8. University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia

    Sue Byrne

  9. Department of Biostatistics, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Bert van der Werf

  10. Department of Psychological Medicine, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Nathan S. Consedine

  11. Nurture Psychology, Auckland, New Zealand

    Marion Roberts

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  1. Katie M. Babbott
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Contributions

KB, MR, and NC conceptualised the structure of the article. KB, MR, DM, CB, CT, PH, SB, MG and GH collected data used in analysis. KB conducted the analyses and wrote the manuscript. BV provided assistance with CFA code. MR, BV, and NC reviewed and edited the manuscript. All authors approved the final manuscript prior to submission.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Katie M. Babbott.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Ethics approval

All research methods have been approved by the Macquarie University Human Research Ethics Committee (no. 5201600152). The University of Auckland Health Research Ethics Committee (AHREC) ratified the approval given by the Macquarie University Ethics Committee for this secondary project.

Consent to participate

Participants provided informed consent for their de-identified data to be shared, analysed, and published.

Consent for publication

As above, participants provided informed consent.

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The original article has been revised to update the correct table 1.

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Babbott, K.M., Mitchison, D., Basten, C. et al. Intuitive Eating Scale-2: psychometric properties and clinical norms among individuals seeking treatment for an eating disorder in private practice. Eat Weight Disord 27, 1821–1833 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-021-01326-x

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