Comparison of child interview and parent reports of children's eating disordered behaviors

Self-report questionnaires of child eating behavior have demonstrated poor agreement with child interview methods and parent report. However, no study has investigated the relationship between child interview and parent report. Therefore, we compared results from a diagnostic interview, the Eating Disorder Examination adapted for Children (ChEDE) to those from a questionnaire, the Adolescent Version of the Questionnaire on Eating and Weight Patterns-parent version (QEWP-P), in a nontreatment sample of overweight and normal weight children. Both instruments were administered to 88 overweight (BMI≥85th percentile) and 79 normal weight (BMI<85th percentile) children, age 10.2±1.7 years, recruited from the community. The ChEDE and QEWP-P were not concordant in terms of the type of eating episodes that occurred in the past month. Using the ChEDE as the criterion method, the QEWP-P had reasonably high specificity, but low sensitivity for the presence of binge episodes (sensitivity 50%, specificity 83%) or objective overeating (sensitivity 30%, specificity 79%) during the past month. ChEDE subscales were, however, significantly related to items assessing eating-related distress on the QEWP-P. While parent report of child eating behaviors may provide some general information regarding eating psychopathology in young nontreatment-seeking children, they do not accurately reflect the results of a structured interview.