Data collection started in 2010; one year follow-ups were conducted through 2011-2012. Psychiatrists collaborating in the study informed personally their patients about the objectives of the study, and recorded the sociodemographic information, including age, gender, marital status, level of education, employment status, and people with whom the patient lived. Those who agreed to take part were also sent the questionnaires and informed consent form by mail. They were asked to return these by mail using an enclosed, pre-stamped envelope. Two reminders also were sent at intervals of 15 days to those who did not respond to the first mailing.

Adaptation of the CIA into Spanish was performed using the backward-forward translation process, which ensures conceptual. Forward translation into Spanish was carried out by two independent native Spanish speaking translators who were fluent in English. Two other independent translators, totally blind to the original version, whose native language was English and who were fluent in Spanish, back-translated the consensus version into English. After reaching consensus on a final translated version, it was sent to the CIA's original author (Dr. Bohn) who gave her approval. We undertook a cognitive debriefing process with a group of 5 ED patients to identify any problems with language. The pre-final version was administered to two small groups, one made up of patients (a sample of 5 respondents) and the other of clinical experts (2 psychiatrists and 2 psychologists who were experts on ED).

The CIA (v. 3.0) (Bohn et al., 2008) is a 16-item self-report measure of psychosocial impairment secondary to features of an eating disorder. This questionnaire measures three domains of impairment-personal, social, and cognitive-attributable to eating habits, exercising, or feelings about eating, shape, or weight over the previous 28 days. Items are rated on a four-point Likert scale, ranging from 0=''Not at all'' to 3=''A lot.'' A global CIA score ranging from 0 to 48 is calculated to provide a global index of the severity of psychosocial impairment due to eating disorder pathology during the past 28 days. A higher score indicates greater impairment. Subscale scores can be calculated to determine the three domains of impairment (personal, social, and cognitive). The original report of the CIA's psychometric properties supported adequate reliability and validity of the measure within a clinical sample of patients with eating disorders (Bohn et al., 2008).

Eating problems were measured by the EAT-12 (Lavik, Clause & Pedersen, 1991). It uses a 4-point scale, from never (score 0) to always (score 2). The EAT-12 yields three factors: dieting, bulimia and food preoccupation, and oral control. Previous studies have supported its validity as a measure of disordered eating (Wichstrøm, Skogen & Øia, 1994; Wichstrøm, 1995). The internal consistency was a 0.71.