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Diagnosing eating disorders in adolescents: A comparison of the eating disorder examination and the development and well‐being assessment
Author(s) -
House Jennifer,
Eisler Ivan,
Simic Mima,
Micali Nadia
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
international journal of eating disorders
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.785
H-Index - 138
eISSN - 1098-108X
pISSN - 0276-3478
DOI - 10.1002/eat.20528
Subject(s) - eating disorders , anorexia nervosa , medical diagnosis , psychology , psychiatry , clinical psychology , anorexia , clinical diagnosis , medicine , pathology
Objective: To compare the diagnostic properties of the Eating Disorder Examination (EDE) and the online version of the Development and Well‐Being Assessment (DAWBA). Method: Fifty‐Seven adolescents (mean age 15.7 years) who attended consecutive assessments at a specialist eating disorders clinic completed the DAWBA, the EDE, and a standard clinical assessment with a multidisciplinary team. Cohen's Kappas were used to make pairwise comparisons between the diagnoses generated by the three assessments. Results: Participants had anorexia nervosa ( n = 30), eating disorders NOS ( n = 21) or no eating disorder ( n = 6) according to the clinical diagnosis. Agreement between the clinical and DAWBA diagnoses was moderate (κ = 0.59), agreement between the DAWBA and EDE diagnoses was fair (κ = 0.21), and agreement between the clinical and EDE diagnoses was poor (κ = 0.10). The EDE did not identify an eating disorder in 20 participants (35% of the sample) who were clinically assessed as cases. Conclusion: Computerized measures using multiple informants may be more suitable for assessing clinical samples of adolescents with anorexia nervosa or eating disorders NOS than individual interviews with young people. © 2008 by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Eat Disord 2008