Emotional eating in Turkish adults: behavioural and psychological determinants with a psychometric evaluation of the Comprehensive Emotional Eating Scale.

This study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Turkish version of the Comprehensive Emotional Eating Scale (CEES) and examined its associations with emotion regulation, cognitive control, cognitive flexibility and perceived stress in adults. A cross-sectional design was conducted with 1521 adults aged 18-74 years (68 % female). The CEES was adapted following standard cross-cultural guidelines, including translation, back-translation and approval by the original scale developer. Participants also completed the Emotional Appetite Questionnaire (EMAQ), Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, Cognitive Control and Flexibility Questionnaire and Perceived Stress Scale. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) assessed construct validity, while internal consistency, convergent validity and multiple linear regression analyses explored predictors of emotional eating. CFA supported a four-factor structure representing Undereating - Positive Emotions, Undereating - Negative Emotions, Overeating - Positive Emotions and Overeating - Negative Emotions, with item loadings of 0·48-0·77; one item was removed due to low loading. Internal consistency was high (α = 0·88-0·91), and convergent validity was confirmed via EMAQ correlations. Multiple regression analyses indicated that greater difficulties in emotion regulation, higher perceived stress, lower cognitive control and flexibility, smoking, higher BMI and chronic disease significantly increased emotional eating. Women showed higher Undereating - Negative Emotion and total emotional eating scores, while smoking, higher BMI and chronic disease elevated scores on specific subscales. The Turkish CEES demonstrates robust psychometric properties and reliably captures multidimensional emotional eating in adults. Psychological and demographic factors increase emotional eating subscales and total scores, supporting the scale's use in research and clinical settings in Türkiye.