Validation of a new Brazilian version of the “Night Eating Questionnaire”

Objectives: The Night Eating questionnaire (NEQ) is regarded as an important tool for the assessment of the severity of the Night Eating Syndrome. The objective of this study was to validate a new Brazilian Portuguese version of the NEQ that could be easily applied to patients from the public health system. Methods: In order to develop the Brazilian Portuguese version of the NEQ, we adopted the following steps: (a) translation, (b) back-translation, (c) comparison between translation and back-translation and (d) pretest. Subsequently, intra and inter-observer reproducibility were assessed in 37 patients from the Endocrinolgy Outpatient Clinic at the University Hospital of the Federal University of Ceará, Brazil. The reliability of the questionnaire was evaluated in 90 individuals from the same Institution. The construct validity of the NEQ was assessed by correlations with clinical variables. Results: This new translated and culturally adapted version showed excellent internal consistency (alfa coefficient =0.87) and reproducibility both intra-observer and inter-observer (individual item coefficients ranging from 0.95 to 1.0 and 0.92 – 1.0, respectively). Conclusions: These results indicate that this Brazilian Portuguese version of the NEQ is a valid and reliable instrument for the assessment of patients with nocturnal eating problems and is equivalent to its original version. No major cultural adaptations were introduced to the questionnaire during the validation process, despite significant linguistic and cultural differences.