LAUSR

The recently developed Salzburg Stress Eating Scale (SSES) is the first to specifically address the relationship of stress experiences and coping failure on the one hand and increases or decreases in food intake on the other hand. The SSES demonstrated good psychometric properties in English and German speaking adult samples. However, it has not been applied to younger age groups, which may differ in their expression and reporting of stress related eating behavior. Therefore, the current study evaluated the psychometric properties and correlates of the SSES in a Dutch speaking community sample of adolescents (study 1; N = 244, 9-18 years, adjusted BMI range = 71-189%, M = 103%) and in an inpatient sample of adolescents with obesity (study 2; N = 100, 9-16 years, adjusted BMI range = 151-310%, M = 194.5%). Factor analysis confirmed the original one factor structure in both studies. Internal consistency was 0.85 in study 1 and 0.90 in study 2 (Cronbach's alpha). In both the obesity and community sample, SSES scores were positively correlated with other eating-related measures (e.g., emotional eating, external eating), and uncorrelated with non-eating-related wellbeing measures (e.g., perceived stress, depressive symptoms). Unexpectedly, however, no association with adjusted BMI was found in the community sample, obesity sample, or combined sample. The scores of the obesity sample were also compared to the community sample in an age and sex-matched subsample of study 1. Against our hypothesis, the obesity sample did not report higher SSES scores than the community sample. The good internal consistency and the evidence for convergent and discriminant validity indicate that the Dutch version of the SSES seems useful in examining this clinically important eating behavior in adolescents. However, validity with regard to stress eating and BMI remains to be further explored.