The Symptom-Checklist-K-9 (SCL-K-9) Discriminates between Overweight/Obese Patients with and without Significant Binge Eating Pathology: Psychometric Properties of an Italian Version

• Main Authors: Claudio Imperatori, Emanuela Bianciardi, Cinzia Niolu, Mariantonietta Fabbricatore, Paolo Gentileschi, Giorgio Di Lorenzo, Alberto Siracusano, Marco Innamorati
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-03-01
• Series: Nutrients
• Subjects: binge eating; scl-k-9; obesity; overweight; bariatric surgery candidates; psychopathology
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/12/3/674

A general personality and psychopathology evaluation is considered to be crucial part of the multidisciplinary assessment for weight-related problems. The Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R) is commonly used to assess general psychopathology in both overweight and obese patients seeking weight-loss treatment. The main purpose of the present research was to investigate the psychometric properties of the brief form of the SCL-90-R (i.e., the SCL-K-9) in a clinical sample (<i>N </i>= 397) of patients seeking weight-loss treatment (i.e., bariatric surgery and a nutritional weight-loss program). The results of the confirmatory factor analysis supported a one-factor solution of the SCL-K-9, with all nine items loading significantly on the common latent factor (lambdas &#8805; 0.587). The ordinal &#945; (= 0.91), the inter-item mean indices of correlation (<i>r_ii</i> = 0.53), and the convergent validity were also satisfactory. A receiver operating characteristic curves procedure showed that both SCL-90-R and SCL-K-9 were able to classify patients with and without significant binge eating pathology according to the Binge Eating Scale (BES) total score. Overall, our results suggest that the SCL-K-9 has adequate psychometric properties and can be applied as a short screening tool to assess general psychopathology in overweight/obese individuals seeking weight-loss treatment and at follow-up interviews when time restraints preclude the use of the full-length form.