Development of the Children’s Eating Behaviour Questionnaire
Open accessAbstract
Individual differences in several aspects of eating style have been implicated in the development of weight problems in children and adults, but there are presently no reliable and valid scales that assess a range of dimensions of eating style. This paper describes the development and preliminary validation of a parent‐rated instrument to assess eight dimensions of eating style in children; the Children's Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (CEBQ). Constructs for inclusion were derived both from the existing literature on eating behaviour in children and adults, and from interviews with parents. They included reponsiveness to food, enjoyment of food, satiety responsiveness, slowness in eating, fussiness, emotional overeating, emotional undereating, and desire for drinks. A large pool of items covering each of these constructs was developed. The number of items was then successively culled through analysis of responses from three samples of families of young children ( N = 131; N = 187; N = 218), to produce a 35‐item instrument with eight scales which were internally valid and had good test‐retest reliability. Investigation of variations by gender and age revealed only minimal gender differences in any aspect of eating style. Satiety responsiveness and slowness in eating diminished from age 3 to 8. Enjoyment of food and food responsiveness increased over this age range. The CEBQ should provide a useful measure of eating style for research into the early precursors of obesity or eating disorders. This is especially important in relation to the growing evidence for the heritability of obesity, where good measurement of the associated behavioural phenotype will be crucial in investigating the contribution of inherited variations in eating behaviour to the process of weight gain.
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Constant factors such as appetitive traits, genetic makeup, usual food preferences, and weight status are associated with different levels of reactivity to food cues.
“Constant factors such as certain appetitive traits (e.g., those assessed by the Adult and Children Eating Behavior Questionnaires) [42,43], a person’s genetic makeup, usual food preferences, and weight status are all associated with different levels of reactivity to food cues [44,45,46,47,48,49].”
From What Is Food Noise? A Conceptual Model of Food Cue Reactivity (2023) · cites this paper as [42]
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- Authors
- Wardle, J., Guthrie, C. A., Sanderson, S., & Rapoport, L.
- Affiliations
- University College London (GB)
- Venue
- Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2001-10
- Volume
- 42
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 963-970
- ISSN
- 0021-9630 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-7610
- OpenAlex
- W2133775078
- Cited by
- 1,747
- References
- 45
- Citations by year
- 2026: 105 · 2025: 154 · 2024: 140 · 2023: 129 · 2022: 154 · 2021: 159 · 2020: 114 · 2019: 111 · 2018: 118 · 2017: 84 · 2016: 83 · 2015: 92 · 2014: 70 · 2013: 48 · 2012: 47
- FWCI
- 3.11
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- discovery.ucl.ac.uk
- Locations
- Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Eating Disorders and Behaviors
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Child Nutrition and Feeding Issues
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Nutrition, Health and Food Behavior
- Keywords
- Children's Eating Behaviour Questionnaire, eating behaviour, eating styles, children, food responsiveness, satiety responsiveness, food enjoyment, emotional overeating, emotional undereating, eating disorders, heritability of obesity, age differences, gender differences
- MeSH terms
- Feeding and Eating Disorders, Body Constitution, Child, Child Development, Child, Preschool, Factor Analysis, Statistical, Feeding Behavior, Female, Humans, Individuality, Male, Parents, Psychiatric Status Rating Scales, Psychometrics, Surveys and Questionnaires, Risk Factors, Reproducibility of Results
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