European Eating Disorders Review Eur. Eat. Disorders Rev. 13, 191–200 (2005) Construction, Scoring and Validation of the Short Evaluation of Eating Disorders (SEED) Stephanie Bauer 1 , Suzanne Winn 2 , Ulrike Schmidt 2 and Hans Kordy 1 * 1 Center for Psychotherapy Research, Stuttgart, Germany 2 Section of Eating Disorders, Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK The paper introduces the construction and scoring principles of the Short Evaluation of Eating Disorders (SEED), which was developed for the assessment of the key eating disorders symptoms. The questionnaire uses six items and allows the calculation of two severity indices for anorexia and bulimia nervosa symptoms. Data from two patient and one non-patient sample as well as therapist ratings are used to investigate different validity aspects of the SEED. Overall, the analyses underline the validity of the instrument. Recommendations for future research activities on the SEED are outlined. Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association. Keywords: anorexia nervosa; bulimia nervosa; assessment; monitoring; validity INTRODUCTION Several major research topics require short and valid instruments with high sensitivity to change to assess and monitor eating disorder (ED) symptomatology. (1) Continuous monitoring of treatment process and outcome. Outcome studies on the efficacy and effectiveness of psychotherapy for ED have so far usually employed only pre- and post-treatment data. There have been only few studies investigating what happens during treatment (e.g. Wilson, 1999), and almost noth- ing is known about patterns of change and what specific changes may mean for therapy outcome. Further research is needed to investigate the implications of events occurring during treat- ment, such as, for example, a rapid response to therapy (Agras, Walsh, Fairburn, Wilson, & Kraemer, 2000; Hanno ¨ ver, Richard, Hansen, Martinovich, & Kordy, 2002), for further treat- ment planning. (2) More individualized treatment strategies. Recently, stepped care approaches, in which treatments are provided sequentially according to patients’ needs, have been recommended for the field of ED (Wilson, Vitousek, & Loeb, 2000). In this research line, a better understanding of the change process in treatment is essential to identify when treatment should switch from one level of care to another (more or less intensive) one. (3) Relapse prevention. Although it has been shown repeatedly that the risk of relapse is high in ED (e.g. Olmsted, Kaplan, & Rockert, 1994; Keel & Mitchell, 1997; Herzog et al., 1999; Reas, Wil- liamson, Martin, & Zucker, 2000), only little is known about prognostically favourable or unfa- vourable factors as well as about time periods of lower or higher risk of relapse. A monitoring of ED symptoms after achieving the status of remission might allow the identification of dete- rioration early and thus help to prevent full relapse. Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association. Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/erv.637 * Correspondence to: Hans Kordy, Center for Psychotherapy Research, Christian-Belser-Str. 79a, D-70597 Stuttgart, Germany. Tel: þ49-711-6781-410. Fax: þ49-711-6876-902. E-mail: kordy@psyres-stuttgart.de Contract/grant sponsor: The Health Foundation.