Intuitive Eating Scale-2: psychometric properties and clinical norms among individuals seeking treatment for an eating disorder in private practice

Purpose: Intuitive Eating (IE) is an approach to eating designed to facilitate a positive relationship with food. Its use in clinical settings and in the community is rapidly growing in popularity. The Intuitive Eating Scale 2 (IES-2) is a widely used measure that indexes intuitive eating motivations and behaviour, however evidence of its validity in populations with clinical eating disorders remains scarce. The objective of the proposed study was thus to evaluate the factor structure of the IES-2 in a large sample of individuals seeking treatment for eating disorders in private practice. Methods: Data collected from 569 women and men aged 12–68 years seeking treatment for an eating disorder in one of eight specialist private outpatient eating disorder clinics were examined using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Relationships between IES-2 scores and measures of psychopathology were also examined. Results: Results were relatively consistent with the purported four-factor structure of the IES-2. The measure displayed strong construct validity and good internal consistency. Scores on the IES-2 were inversely associated with scores of depression, anxiety, and disordered eating, providing evidence for divergent validity of the measure. Clinical norms are provided for anorexia nervosa (AN) spectrum disorders and bulimia nervosa (BN) spectrum disorders, as well as for the clinical sample as a whole. Conclusion: Findings suggest that the IES-2 may be an appropriate measure for evaluating behaviours relating to IE in community outpatient eating disorder settings, and provide further evidence for the association between IE and positive health outcomes. Level of evidence: III, evidence obtained from well-designed cohort or case–control analytic studies.