Eating Disorder Inventory-3, validation in Swedish patients with eating disorders, psychiatric
outpatients and a normal control sample
Sammanfattning
Background: The Eating Disorder Inventory-3 (EDI-3) is designed to assess eating disorder
psychopathology and the associated psychological symptoms. The instrument has been revised and
has not yet been validated for Swedish conditions in its current form. Aims: The aim of this study was
to investigate the validity and reliability of this inventory and present national norms for Swedish
females. Methods: Data from patients with eating disorders (n = 292), psychiatric outpatients (n =
140) and normal controls (n = 648), all females, were used to study the internal consistency, the
discriminative ability, and the sensitivity and specificity of the inventory using preliminary cut-offs for
each subscale and diagnosis separately. Swedish norms were compared with those from Denmark,
USA, Canada, Europe and Australian samples. Results: The reliability was acceptable for all
subscales except Asceticism among normal controls. Analysis of variance showed that the EDI-3
discriminates significantly between eating disorders and normal controls. Anorexia nervosa was
significantly discriminated from bulimia nervosa and eating disorder not otherwise specified on the
Eating Disorder Risk Scales. Swedish patients scored significantly lower than patients from other
countries on the majority of the subscales. Drive for Thinness is the second best predictor for an
eating disorder. The best predictor for anorexia nervosa was Interoceptive Deficits and Bulimia for
the other diagnoses. Conclusions/clinical implications: The EDI-3 is valid for use with Swedish
patients as a clinical assessment tool for the treatment planning and evaluation of patients with
eating-related problems. However, it still exist some uncertainty regarding its use as a screening
tool.