The development and validation of the secondary exercise addiction scale

Area of Science:

• Psychiatry
• Clinical Psychology
• Behavioral Science

Background:

• Exercise addiction can be a primary condition or secondary to eating disorders.
• Current methods require two separate screening tools to identify secondary exercise addiction.
• A need exists for a single, validated tool to differentiate primary and secondary exercise addiction.

Purpose of the Study:

• To validate the Secondary Exercise Addiction Scale (SEAS), a novel screening tool.
• To assess the SEAS's ability to stratify individuals with primary versus secondary exercise addiction.
• To establish the reliability and validity of the SEAS in a diverse sample.

Main Methods:

• Phase 1: Statistical reduction of scale items (n=339).
• Phase 2: Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to assess latent structure robustness (n=382).
• Phase 3: Determination of cut-off scores and concurrent reliability with established measures (EAI, SCOFF) (n=721).
• Phase 4: Assessment of test-retest reliability (n=45).

Main Results:

• The SEAS was reduced to 11 items across two components: exercise addiction and eating disorder symptomology.
• CFA indicated an acceptable model fit (CFI=0.93, TLI=0.91).
• Established cut-off scores demonstrated high specificity (≥91.97% for exercise addiction, ≥96.27% for eating disorders).
• The SEAS showed strong concurrent reliability with the EAI (r=0.70) and SCOFF (r=0.72).
• Excellent test-retest reliability was observed for both components (r=0.95 for exercise addiction, r=0.93 for eating disorders).

Conclusions:

• The SEAS is a valid and reliable instrument for measuring primary and secondary exercise addiction.
• The scale effectively differentiates between exercise addiction types.
• Further validation in clinical populations is recommended.