Supervisors info:
Ελευθερία Βάρσου, Αναπληρώτρια καθηγήτρια , Ιατρικής, ΕΚΠΑ
Φραγκίσκος Γονιδάκης, Επίκουρος καθηγητής, Ιατρικής , ΕΚΠΑ
Ιωάννης Μιχόπουλος, Αναπληρωτής καθηγητής, Ιατρικής,ΕΚΠΑ
Summary:
Introduction :The term Orthorexia has emerged the last few years in an effort to describe excessive concern about healthy eating. People that develop an orthorectic behavior exclude gradually from their diet foods or food groups which they consider to be harmful. They prefer to prepare their food by themselves, in a ritual way, they spend too much time planning their meals and they often spend a lot of money on buying food they consider to be of high quality. Such dietary habits are usually accompanied by excessive exercising. While the primary goal is to improve health and achieve purity, the excessive fixation to healthy eating results in nutritional deficiencies, social isolation and-finally- poor quality of life.
The first to use the term Orthorexia was the American doctor Steven Bratman (1997). Since then, few studies have dealt with this issue. During the last years, Orthorexia nervosa has attracted the attention of the scientific community, as this behavior pattern is more and more often observed by Eating Disorder specialists. However, Orthorexia nervosa hasn’t yet been recognized as a mental disorder and, therefore, there is no universally accepted definition of this phenomenon, nor specific diagnostic criteria. Studies mainly focus on the wide-ranging of this behavior, identifying high-risk groups, detection of possible causes and its correlation with Eating Disorders and other mental disorders.
Purpose: The aim of this study is validation of the ORTO-15 questionnaire (Donini et al., 2005) which was designed to assess behaviors related to Orthorexia nervosa. More specifically, reliability, construct validity and converging validity of the questionnaire will be explored, as well as its distinctive ability, whether there are foreseeable limits and possible differences in the scores depending on the demographics.
Method: The ORTO-15 questionnaire was translated and adapted in the Greek language according to the national guidelines. After its final version in Greek was formed, its test-retest reliability was checked. Then, the questionnaire was completed by 120 students of Psychology Department of Panteion University, along with EAT-26, so as to check if there is a correlation of the results of the two questionnaires. Additionally, demographics were collected, BMI and information related to Eating Disorders.
Conclusions : The greek version of the ORTO-15 questionnaire shows acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach’s a 0.7). The predictive ability of the total score of the ORTO-15 for the presence of an Eating Disorder was not significant. The correlation of the two questionnaires, ORTO-15 and EAT-26 revealed that more problems regarding diet and bulimia were related to more symptoms of Orthorexia Nervosa. Finally, there was no considerable correlation of the 3 factors in which the questions of the ORTO-15 were grouped (Emotional, Rational and Behavioral) with age, BMI and years of education.
Keywords:
Orthorexia nervosa, Eating Disorders, ORTO-15, EAT-26
