Disordered eating and exercise: development and preliminary validation of the compulsive exercise test (CET)
Lorin Taranis1, Stephen Touyz, Caroline Meyer
1Loughborough University Centre for Research into Eating Disorders, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire, UK.
Summary
The Compulsive Exercise Test (CET) assesses excessive exercise maintenance. This validated scale shows strong reliability and correlates with eating pathology, supporting a multidimensional view of compulsive exercise.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Behavioral Science
Background:
- Excessive exercise is a significant concern, often linked with eating psychopathology.
- Understanding the maintenance factors of compulsive exercise is crucial for developing effective interventions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and validate the Compulsive Exercise Test (CET) to assess key factors in excessive exercise maintenance.
- To examine the psychometric properties of the CET in a sample of young female exercisers.
Main Methods:
- Recruited 367 young female exercisers from university campuses across three studies.
- Administered the CET alongside other measures of excessive exercise and eating psychopathology.
- Utilized factor analysis to construct the final 24-item, five-subscale CET.
Main Results:
- The CET demonstrated high internal consistency and strong concurrent and convergent validity.
- The CET correlated significantly with existing measures of excessive exercise and eating pathology.
- The CET explained more variance in eating pathology than existing excessive exercise measures.
Conclusions:
- The CET subscales align with a cognitive-behavioral model of excessive exercise.
- The findings support the multidimensional nature of the excessive exercise construct.
- Further validation in clinical populations, such as women with eating disorders, is warranted.
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