INTRODUCTION:

Self-efficacy refers to the beliefs in the ability to organise and implement action plans needed to achieve a certain result and to the feeling of control over the behaviours and environment. Despite this construct having some degree of generalisation when considering related tasks or behaviours, as in eating behaviour, only the General Eating Self-Efficacy Scale assesses global features of eating self-efficacy. This instrument showed good psychometric properties among Portuguese higher education students.

OBJECTIVES:

To study the psychometric properties of the General Eating Self-Efficacy Scale among female patients treating overweight and to study the relationship of eating self-efficacy with age, education and Body Mass Index.

METHODOLOGY:

We studied a sample of 63 women attending Nutrition appointments to treat overweight: mean age of 40 years (SD = 11), mean education of 9 years (SD = 4) and mean Body Mass Index of 36.4 Kg/m2 (SD = 7.0).

RESULTS:

Similarly to the original study among higher education students, the scale showed good reliability (α = 0.864) and a unifactorial structure, with the extracted factor explaining 67.4% of the overall variance. The associations with other instruments revealed good convergent and discriminant validity. General Eating Self-Efficacy Scale score did not significantly correlate with either age (r = -0.004, p = 0.973), years of education (r = -0.223, p = 0.090) or Body Mass Index (r = -0.164, p = 0.215).

CONCLUSIONS:

The results of this study show that the General Eating Self-Efficacy Scale presents good psychometric properties among females treating overweight and that it appears to be a useful tool for use in clinical settings.

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