Introduction:

Regarding eating psychopathology, the international literature shows that between 7% and 17% of children aged seven to twelve present with disordered eating behaviors.

Objective:

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the psychometric characteristics of the Self-administered Children’s Binge Eating Disorder Scale (SA-C-BEDS) as a screening tool for the risk of binge eating disorder (BED) in a Mexican child population.

Method:

The self-administered version of the C-BEDS was translated into Spanish and adapted, and its reliability, and exploratory and confirmatory validity obtained. It was sent to two samples of elementary school pupils from May-July 2022 through the SurveyPlanet online platform.

Results:

A total of 378 children (girls = 193 and boys = 185) with a mean age of 10.22 years (SD = .94), with no differences by sex, answered the questionnaire. “Eating without being hungry” was the main behavior reported (44.8% in girls and 33.7% in boys), followed by eating associated with a certain mood (25% in girls and 21.8% in boys). The scale was distributed within a single factor, obtaining a significant Bartlett’s test of sphericity, .73 on the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test and an Ordinal alpha reliability of .81. Confirmatory validity showed that the model fits the data and is valid.

Discussion and conclusion:

Preliminary evidence of the validity and reliability of the SA-C-BEDS for evaluating the risk of binge eating behaviors in Mexican children was obtained, suggesting that this scale is useful for the timely identification of the risk of BED cases.

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