The Shame, Guilt, and Pride Questionnaire (SGPED).
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The Shame, Guilt, and Pride Questionnaire for Eating Disorders in Adolescence (SGPED)
IRAS ID
323024
Contact name
Anthony James
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 10 months, 7 days
Research summary
Research Summary:
The aim of the study is to help understand the role of shame, guilt, and pride in eating disorders by evaluating a newly developed questionnaire -the Shame, Guilt, and Pride in Eating Disorders (SGPED) and validating it in a clinical population against other measures of these emotions. SGPED will be a new, easy to administer questionnaire to measure the state – that is presence of shame, guilt, and pride during treatment over two months.
The questionnaire has been validated but requires test-retest reliability measurement at one week. The questionnaire will then be used to track these emotions during the course of treatment in a longitudinal study of 2 months (baseline, 1 week, 2 months) during the initial stages of treatment. All questionnaires take 20 minutes to complete each time, and there are demographic questions on diagnosis, weight and height, age, gender and ethnicity. Adolescents will be rewarded with a £10 voucher for completing all 3 surveys.
The study is online and open to CAMHS adolescent patients with an ED, or via the BEAT (ED charity), again online.Lay summary of study results:
This study aimed to validate a questionnaire (Feelings in Eating Disorders FIN-ED) on shame, guilt and pride in eating disorders in adolescence and younger adults. I am glad to report that this has been achieved. I have devised a questionnaire with five questions on shame, five on guilt and five on pride, which has good psychometric properties, including convergent and discriminant validity, test-retest reliability and predictive validity using hierarchical regression analysis. Other psychometrics, including area under the curve (AUC) were satisfactory.
The two-month study allowed exploration of the questionnaire and the self-conscious emotions during the course of treatment. Treatment, however, was never specified– participants were not asked about their weight or stage of their treatment. Nevertheless, very useful information was obtained showing that, over time, shame and pride decreased; however, guilt remained steady, as indeed did eating disorder pathology. The timescale, of course, is very short, but this was designed to fit in with a DPhil study. This has been recognised as a limitation of the study.An interesting finding was that guilt was strongly predictive of eating disorder pathology, which differs from the current literature, which highlights shame more, and is worthy of mention and hopefully recognition in a publication.
The study was run through Qualtrics and was easy to run and manage. One hundred and sixty-one participants were recruited, leaving 150 with reliable and good information at baseline (T0), 110 at one week (T1) and 93 at 2-month follow-up (T2). There is a notable loss, but examination showed that the loss was random allowing appropriate analysis with Generalised Estimating Equations (GEE) and linear model regression. Diagnostics on the regression analyses were good.
There were no complaints and, indeed, several emails saying how happy participants were to take part and that they were pleased that this research was being undertaken. There were several thank-you notes for the £20 token.
Feedback will be given to participants who requested this once the final analysis has been done. I am hoping that the work will be accepted as part of the DPhil and a paper will be submitted to the International Journal of Eating Disorders.
In summary, I have produced a clinically useful, easily understood, online questionnaire that is short but practical, that demonstrates useful psychometric properties and produces useful findings. I have argued that guilt is an important part of eating disorder pathology separate from depression and needs treatment in its own right, with for instance, Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT). If accepted, this would be a useful clinical finding.REC name
South West - Frenchay Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
25/SW/0070
Date of REC Opinion
4 Jul 2025
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion