Graduation Year

2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.A.

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Degree Granting Department

Psychology

Major Professor

J. K. Thompson, Ph.D.

Co-Major Professor

Diana Rancourt, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Robert Dedrick, Ph.D.

Keywords

Drunkorexia, alcohol-related compensatory behaviors, measurement, body image, disordered eating

Abstract

Drunkorexia refers to a set of disordered eating behaviors that occur in the context of a drinking episode for the purpose of 1) off setting caloric intake of the alcohol or 2) increasing the effects of alcohol. The Compensatory Eating and Behaviors in Response to Alcohol Consumption Scale (CEBRACS) was developed with the purpose of measuring drunkorexia behaviors at three time points: before, during, and after a drinking episode. The purpose of this study was to further validate the measure for use in men and women by examining measurement invariance, reliability, and validity. First, single group confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were conducted separately by gender to examine the underlying factor structure of the measure. The two groups independently showed similar factor structure. The factor structure for both men and women indicated the removal of the original CEBRACS Restriction subscale. A multi-group CFA was conducted on the modified factor structure using gender as the grouping variable. This revised measure was found to have scalar invariance suggesting that means and variances of this measure can be compared. The current study addressed several limitations of previous measurement validation studies including a large diverse sample and thorough examination of the psychometric properties of the CEBRACS. This work provides additional evidence supporting the validity of the CEBRACS and suggests measurement invariance between genders.

Share

COinS