A Standardization Study of the Korean Version of Eating Attitudes Test-26 I : Reliability and Factor Analysis

한국판 식사태도검사-26(The Korean Version of Eating Attitudes Test-26 : KEAT-26) 표준화 연구 I : 신뢰도 및 요인분석

The purpose of this study was to test a reliability and validity of the Korean version of Eating Attitudes Test-26(KEAT-26). Using multi-stage sampling, we finally got 3,496 subjects(1422 males and 2074 females) who were available for analysis from target 4,400 Korean adults over 18 in the nationwide areas of9 kus, 10 middle or small cities, and 17 kuns. We tried to make T score norm of the KEAT-26 as a cutoff score and STEN score norm as a index of severity for disordered eating behaviors. For the male group, Cronhach's internal consistency was .83 and Spearman-Brown split half correlation coefficiency was .75. For the female group, each of them was .81 and .75, and .81, .75 for the grand total group respectively. Validity test was performed by construct validation analysis. By a iterated principal axis factoring, 4 factors were extracted. There were some differences in the factors of the KEAT-26 by sex. In the male group, factor I was 'self-control of eating and bulimic symptom', factor II was 'food preoccupation and dieting', factor III was 'preoccupation with being thinner', factor N was 'avoidance of sweet foods'. In contrast with the male group, factor I was 'self-control of eating and bulimic symptom', factor II was 'preoccupation with being thinner', factor III was 'food preoccupation' and factor N was 'dieting' in the female group. We used T score 65 as a cutoff score. T score 65 corresponded to raw score 19 in the male group, 22 in the female group and 21 in the grand total group. Severity of disordered eating behaviors was measured by a STEN score. In the male group, each of the score range of 0-10, 11-14, 15-18, 19-22 and over 23 represented the degree of none, subclinical, manifest, moderate and severe severity respectively. Each of the score range of 0-13, 14-17, 18-21, 22-26 and over 27 in the female group, and the score range of 0-12, 13-16, 17-20, 21-25 and over 26 in the grand total group also represented the same degree of severity as like in the male group. These results support that KEAT-26 is a reliable and valid scale for evaluating disordered eating behaviors and eating problems.