Self-functioning traits affecting meal compliance in eating disorder patients

The objective of this study was to measure the extent to which self-functioning traits relate to meal compliance in eating disorder patients by using multiple regression analysis. Compliance was the dependent variable. It was recorded on a meal flowsheet during breakfast, lunch and dinner and compiled for the 8 days immediately preceding each patient's discharge. The independent variables were gender, self-esteem (Rosenberg Scale) and 7 subscales of the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI-2): drive for thinness, body dissatisfaction, ineffectiveness, perfectionism, interpersonal distrust, interoceptive awareness and maturity fears. A random sample of 30 subjects who completed the above instruments before May 1999 were included in the study. The results suggest that close to 50% of their meal compliance can be explained by variations in four explanatory variables: gender, ineffectiveness, interoceptive awareness and distrust. The adjusted r2 was 0.497 and the significance of the equation, measured by the p-value, was p = 0.0002. We conclude that multiple regression analysis is a valuable tool to identify patients' traits with the strongest effect in meal compliance.