144 Dieting
The measurement of restraintMost research examining dieting behavior uses formal measures of dietary
restraint which have been subjected to both psychometric and conceptual
analysis. For example, Ogden (1993) examined dietary restraint as assessed
by the Restraint Scale (RS; Herman and Polivy, 1980; Heatherton et al.,
1988) and the restrained eating section of the DEBQ (DEBQR; van Strien
et al., 1986) and found that high scorers on these measures were charac-
terized by both successful and failed restriction. It was concluded that these
measures confound successful and failed dieting and that restrained eating
involves both under- and overeating. In a similar vein, van Strien (1999)
examined restrained eating as measured by the Three Factor Eating Question-
naire (TFEQ; Stunkard and Messick, 1985) and the DEBQR (van Strien et al.,
1986). The results from this study indicated that although these two measures
similarly confound success and failure, these two aspects of dieting can be
easily unconfounded by using a two-factor approach to dieting. From this
perspective, dieters can be understood as either successful or unsuccessful
dieters. Likewise, Stice, Ozer, and Kees (1997) examined the relationship
between restrained eating as measured by the Restraint Scale (Herman and
Polivy, 1980; Heatherton et al., 1988) and by the DEBQR (van Strien et al.,
1986), and concluded that although higher restraint scores on both these
measures were correlated with overeating (in line with restraint theory),
this correlation was lowered for the Restraint Scale when items specifically
asking about overeating were removed. Further research in this area has
also been carried out by Westenhoefer and colleagues (Westenhoefer et al.,
1994; Westenhoefer, Stunkard, and Pudel, 1999). These studies have explored
restrained eating as measured by the Restraint Scale, the Three Factor Eating
Questionnaire, and the DEBQR, and have indicated that dieting is associated
with overeating only in those that score high on questions specifically
concerned with overeating and disinhibition. In line with these findings
Westenhoefer, Stunkard, and Pudel (1999) have argued that dieters should
be conceptualized as having either rigid or flexible control and that those
with flexible control are the ones that show overeating.
Therefore, as a result of some of the contradictions in the literature explor-
ing the relationship between restraint and overeating, there has been an
increasing amount of research exploring what is being measured by the
different restraint scales. This has raised a debate about the different
psychometric properties of these measures and their conceptual clarity (e.g.,
Williamson et al., 2008). In general, it would seem that while some measures