The Management of Emotional Eating
The attached class on emotional eating was developed by Don Williamson, PhD, behavioral
consultant at DPP Pennington. There is a great deal of information in the class, more than you
may be able to present effectively in four sessions, so you may want to select parts of it to focus
on for four sessions or conduct additional sessions. Be sure to allow ample time at each session
for discussion and interaction among participants.
How to Score the Three Factor Eating Questionnaire
In this class, participants complete the Three Factor Eating Questionnaire (see Appendix C)
which measures three dimensions of eating:
Factor 1: Dietary Restraint (21 questions pertain to this factor)
Factor 2: Disinhibition (16 questions pertain to this factor)
Factor 3: Perceived Hunger (14 questions pertain to this factor)
Instruct participants to complete the questionnaire by circling “T” for true or “F” for false for
each question. While the leader continues conducting the class, have an assistant collect the
completed questionnaires and score them as follows.
a. For each question, if a participant’s circled response matches the circled response on
the scoring key (see Appendix D), the assistant writes on the participant’s completed
questionnaire, to the right of that question, the factor number that is indicated
beside that question on the scoring key. If the participant’s circled response does not
match the scoring key, the assistant goes on to the next question.
For example, if Mrs. Smith circled “T” for question 1, the assistant would write a “2" on
Mrs. Smith’s questionnaire to the right of question 1. If Mrs. Smith circled “F” for
question 2, the assistant would move on to question 3. If Mrs. Smith circled “T” for
question 3, the assistant would write a “3" to the right of that question.
b. After scoring each question, the assistant tallies the number of “1's” and “2's” written
to the right of the questions on the participant’s questionnaire. (Factor 3 correlates
highly with Factor 2 and is not included in the final scoring for this class.) The assistant
writes a total for Factor 1 and a total for Factor 2 on the participant’s questionnaire.
c. On a copy of the handout “What Kind of Eater Am I?” the assistant writes the
participant’s name and the date, then circles the section of the grid within which the
participant’s scores fall. For example, if the assistant counted a total of three 1's (Factor
1: Dietary Restraint) and 13 2's (Factor 2: Disinhibition) on Mrs. Smith’s scored
questionnaire, the assistant would circle the bottom left section of the grid (the scores fall
within the 0-10 range for Low Dietary Restraint and the 10 or more range for High
Overeating).
d. Finally, the assistant circles the category at the top of the handout that applies to the
participant. Mrs. Smith’s category would be Low Restraint/High Overeating.