Validation of the Children’s Eating Behavior Questionnaire in 5 and 6 Year-Old Children: The GUSTO Cohort Study

Revised subscales of the Children’s Eating Behavior Questionnaire (CEBQ) have been proposed to be more appropriate for assessing appetitive traits in Singaporean 3 year-olds, but the CEBQ has not yet been validated in older children in this population. The current study aimed to validate the CEBQ at ages 5 (n = 653) and 6 (n = 449) in the ethnically diverse GUSTO cohort. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) examined whether the established eight-factor model of the CEBQ was supported in this sample. Overall, the CFA showed a poor model fit at both ages 5 and 6. At both ages 5 and 6, an exploratory factor analysis revealed a six-factor structure: food fussiness, enjoyment of food, slowness in eating, emotional undereating, emotional overeating and desire to drink. Cronbach’s alpha estimates ranged from 0.70 to 0.85 for all subscales. Criterion validity was tested by correlating subscales with the weight status of 6 years of age. At age 5 and 6, lower scores of slowness of eating while higher scores of enjoyment of food was associated with child overweight. At age 6, higher scores of desire to drink was also associated child overweight. In conclusion, a revised six factor-structure of the CEBQ at ages 5 and 6 were more appropriate for examining appetitive traits in this sample