ORIGINAL ARTICLE   

Minerva Psichiatrica 2017 December;58(4):196-202

DOI: 10.23736/S0391-1772.17.01948-3

Copyright © 2017 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Italian validation of the Grazing Questionnaire: analysis of psychometric properties

Matteo ALOI ^{1, 2}, Marianna RANIA ^{1, 2}, Pasquale DE FAZIO ¹, Cristina SEGURA-GARCIA ^{1, 2} ✉

¹ Department of Health Sciences, University Magna Graecia of Catanzaro, Catanzaro, Italy; ² Center for Clinical Research and Treatment of Eating Disorders, Mater Domini University Hospital, Catanzaro, Italy

BACKGROUND: Grazing is one of the atypical behaviors that are present among obese patients with or without binge eating disorder (BED). Nevertheless, this behavior has only rarely been reported and frequently neglected in clinical assessments and research. The only self-report measure available to assess this eating behavior is the Grazing Questionnaire (GQ) but currently no Italian validation exists.
METHODS: Therefore, we recruited 293 undergraduate students to validate the Italian version of the GQ. GQ total score was correlated with eating psychopathology, binge eating, night eating, anxiety and mood symptoms. Second order confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) model, Cronbach’s α, and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) test-retest, were used to evaluate structure, reliability, and stability, respectively.
RESULTS: CFA confirmed the two factors structure as in the original version. Internal consistency of the total scale was α=0.82, grazing behavior α=0.83 and controllability α=0.77. The three-week test-retest reliability was excellent (ICC [95% CI]= 0.906 (0.884-0.924). Regarding construct validity, we found moderate-high correlations between GQ and other measures.
CONCLUSIONS: The Italian version of GQ appears to be a valid and reliable tool to investigate grazing behavior in future studies among Italian speaking countries.

KEY WORDS: Feeding behavior - Binge-eating disorder - Surveys and questionnaires