Eating Disorder Quality of Life Scale (EDQLS) in ethnically diverse college women: an exploratory factor analysis

BACKGROUND: Extant research suggests that disordered eating is common in college women and is associated with decreased quality of life. The Eating Disorder Quality of Life Scale (EDQLS) examines impairment to disordered eating-related quality of life, but has not been validated in college women. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to examine the reliability, validity, and factor structure of the EDQLS in a diverse sample of 971 college women. METHOD: Students from a large United States university completed questionnaires examining disordered eating and the EDQLS online. RESULTS: The EDQLS demonstrated excellent internal consistency and good convergent validity with the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDEQ). Contrary to the original 12-domain design of the EDQLS, principal component analyses suggested five factors that mapped onto the following constructs: (1) Positive Emotionality; (2) Body/Weight Dissatisfaction; (3) Disordered Eating Behaviors; (4) Negative Emotionality; and (5) Social Engagement. However, 15 of the 40 items loaded onto multiple factors. CONCLUSIONS: Total scores on the EDQLS are reliable and valid when used with diverse samples of college women, but some revisions are needed to create subscales than can justifiably be used in clinical practice.