Overall Research Project Description Eating disorders represent one of the most severe and deadly classes of psychopathology (van Hoeken & Hoek, 2020). As such, a considerable amount of research efforts has explored which demographic, psychological, psychiatric, and environmental risk factors pose the greatest risk for the development of eating pathology. Despite some progress that the eating disorder field has achieved in the study of risk factors, some methodological limitations have persisted, and thereby stunted progress in accurate risk prediction. One such limitation is the field’s over-prioritization of study samples which are predominantly white and female. While eating disorders have commonly been understood as affecting predominantly White, affluent, adolescent girls from wealthy countries (Douglas, Balas, & Gordon, 2021), epidemiological research has been demonstrated that individuals of all genders, sexual orientations, ages, races, ethnicities, and socio-economic statuses are affected by eating disorders (Qian et al., 2021; Santomauro et al., 2019). Therefore, it is important that when asking the question of what risk factors predict eating disorders, we are also evaluating who these risk factors pertain to. Investigating external validity, or generality, of findings is crucial in risk factor research because risk factors are not assumed to have a uniform impact across populations (Kraemer et al., 1997). Without explicitly investigating how individual risk factors impact different populations, progress in detecting risk and developing appropriately targeted interventions will be limited due to lack of generality.
The current study seeks to address a gap in knowledge by empirically investigating the state of diversity science with regard to generality in eating disorder risk factor literature. To do so, we ask four primary questions. First, what proportion of studies report sample characteristics at all? Second, have practices in reporting sample characteristics changed over time? Third, what is the average demographic make-up of samples included in this literature? Lastly, do the reported samples reflect the broader population of individuals affected by eating disorders? To address these questions, we are conducting a systematic review of all eating disorder risk factor studies published prior to 2023. Addressing these questions is aligned with recent calls to improve the state of diversity science in psychological research broadly (Buchanan et al., 2021), and to better contextualize the risk factor findings the field has amassed thus far.