The development and validation of the secondary exercise addiction scale.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: Exercise addiction can be secondary to eating disorders, or a primary condition in the absence of another disorder. Currently, to determine secondary exercise addiction, two screening tools must be administered. The aim of this study was to validate a novel screening tool able to stratify between primary and secondary exercise addiction, called the secondary exercise addiction scale (SEAS). METHODS: Phase 1 (n = 339) described the statistical reduction of an initial pool of scale items. Phase 2 (n = 382) used a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine the robustness of the latent structure. Phase 3 (n = 721) determined cut off scores for the eating disorder and exercise addiction sections of the SEAS and determine concurrent reliability with the exercise addiction inventory (EAI) and the SCOFF questionnaires. Phase 4 (n = 45) determined test-retest reliability. RESULTS: Phase 1 extracted two components exercise addiction and eating disorder symptomology, with 11 items retained. The CFA in Phase 2 showed an acceptable fit to the proposed model (comparative fit index = 0.93, Tucker Lewis Index = 0.91). Phase 3 determined cut off scores of ≥ 28 (specificity = 91.97%), and ≥ 20 (specificity = 96.27%) in the respective exercise addiction and eating disorders sections of the SEAS. The respective sections also correlated well with the EAI (r = 0.70, p = < 0.001) and the SCOFF (r = 0.72, p = < 0.001). Phase 4 showed excellent test-retest reliability (exercise addiction r = 0.95, p = < 0.001, eating disorders r = 0.93, p = < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The SEAS appears to be a valid and reliable tool for measuring primary and secondary exercise addiction. Further studies are warranted to further validate this tool amongst clinical populations. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE Level III evidence obtained from cohort or case-control analytic studies.