Italian Validation of the Accommodation and Enabling Scale for Eating Disorders and Caregiver Skills Scale for Caregivers of Patients With Eating Disorders

Abstract

Objectives: Eating disorders (ED) impact caregivers' lives, affecting their mental health and the entire family system. Caregivers often tend to accommodate ED behaviors, structuring family life around ED pathology. Both high levels of accommodating behaviors and low caregiver skills were associated with poor patient outcomes, thereby fostering the maintenance of the ED pathology. The current study's objectives were to translate the AESED and CASK scales into Italian and assess both self-report instruments' psychometric properties.

Methods: We enrolled 167 caregivers of ED outpatients who approached the Regional Center for Eating Disorders (ED) at the University Hospital of Verona. A battery of self-report instruments was administered two times 1 week apart.

Results: Data analysis highlighted an internal structure based on 5 factors for the AESED and confirmed the 6-factor internal structure of CASK. The AESED subscales' internal consistency ranged from 0.74 to 0.86, while CASK's internal consistency ranged from 0.62 to 0.80. For both the AESED and CASK subscales, the test-retest reliability was satisfactory.

Conclusions: The results demonstrated adequate psychometric properties of the Italian versions of the AESED and CASK scales, which are useful for assessing the accommodation and enabling behaviors and skills of caregivers of ED patients in the Italian context.

Keywords: caregiver; caregiver's skills; eating disorders; psychometric properties; validation study.