Validity of the Brief Dyadic Scale of Expressed Emotion in Adolescents

Perceived expressed emotion is a valuable predictor of clinical outcome in psychiatric and community samples, but its assessment is limited to few instruments. A recent development to briefly assess expressed emotion from the patient's perspective is the 14-item Brief Dyadic Scale of Expressed Emotion (BDSEE). Although psychometric properties of the BDSEE have been provided for adult eating disorders, validity for adolescents is still lacking. In this study, BDSEE's factorial, convergent, and divergent validity was tested in an adolescent sample with binge-eating disorder and a matched community sample.

For validation, well-established self- and mother-report questionnaires and adolescent's Five Minute Speech Sample were used.

Confirmatory factor analysis on the German BDSEE replicated the proposed three-factor structure in adolescents. BDSEE's convergent validity with the Five Minute Speech Sample and construct-related questionnaires was shown. Divergent validity was documented with BDSEE subscales being unrelated to socio-demographic and clinical characteristics. Further, BDSEE subscales were unrelated to measures of maternal distress.

While the results underline that the BDSEE is a valid self-report measure for assessing perceived expressed emotion in adolescents with and without binge-eating disorder, the evaluation of its predictive validity is still in need.