Reliability and Validity of the Emotional Eater Questionnaire in Romanian Adults

Negative emotions and chronic stress trigger abnormal compensatory behaviors known as emotional eating (EE). EE is a well-known mediator for increased body mass index and weight gain. Our aim was to analyze the factor structure and validity and reliability of the Emotional Eater Questionnaire (EEQ) in a sample of 200 Romanian adults with excess weight. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to assess the construct validity. The mindful eating questionnaire (MEQ) was used to test concurrent validity. Cronbach’s alpha and Spearman correlations were used to analyze internal and external reliability. The socio-demographic characteristics were used as factors for convergent validity. PCA revealed the existence of three major factors, disinhibition, type of food, and guilt, which accounted for 64.9% of the variance. Concurrent validity showed medium to large associations with MEQ (r = 0.650; p < 0.001) and a large association with the emotional subscale of MEQ (r = 0.732; p < 0.001). Reliability was adequate with Cronbach’s alfa = 0.841 and ICC = 0.775. In a multivariate model, the highest contribution to the EE score was the age (beta = −0.327), followed by feminine gender (beta = 0.321), high levels of perceived stress (beta = 0.215), BMI (beta = 0.184) and lower perceived health status (beta = 0.184). The Romanian version of the EEQ is a reliable and valid tool for measuring emotional eating in adults with excess weight.