MEDICIÓN DE LA MICROBIOTA PERIIMPLANTARIA

After reviewing the main findings of the present research, it is important to briefly discuss main strengths and limitations of the study. When it comes to its strengths, it can be noted that the study had a sufficient number of participants for a highly powered study. Moreover, all employed scales showed a good reliability, therefore leading to the conclusion that the lack of significant effects, which occurred occasionally, did not occur due to the poor choice of measures. The reasoning that guided the formation of hypotheses was based on an extensive literature review, and it was supported by a wide variety of research. Therefore, the present research had sufficient background and power in detecting significant effects. Finally, this research involved a high number of male participants with BED, which is an important strength of the study because past research on BED has mostly been conducted with female participants. The results of this study, therefore, can be generalised to the population of male individuals with BED as well.

When it comes to the study’s limitations, what can be noted is that the number of BED-O and Non-BED-O participants was not equal. In fact, most participants belonged to the

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BED-O group. This was a major methodological problem in the study, and could have biased the results. In particular, unequal distribution of the two groups could have resulted in various non-significant results, that would otherwise turn significant (Field, 2009). As highlighted by a variety of authors (Napolitano et al., 2011; Nicholls, Devonport, & Blake, 2016; Perez & Warren, 2012; Spoor et al., 2006), existing studies on BED-O individuals are often flawed because of small and unequal sample sizes.

Another problem of the study relates to its sample. This research sought to differentiate between obese individuals with and without BED. However, participants were recruited at a diabetic clinic, which implies that all obese participants in this research had diabetes. In essence, this recruitment procedure has failed to include obese participants who do not have diabetes. According to the WHO (2014), however, only some 54% of obese individuals have diabetes. Thus, the results of the present research have a potential to be generalised only to the portion of obese individuals with diabetes, which severely restraints the generalizability of the findings. There is a chance that the relationship between EI, coping, and overeating behaviours, which was found in this research, would change in a sample of obese individuals without diabetes. For this reason, future researchers should replicate this research by seeking to include obese patients with and without diabetes.

Furthermore, K-S test revealed that Global EI, Maladaptive Coping and External Eating were all normally distributed. Other variables were not normally distributed, indicating that there is potential for these variables to be somewhat skewed. For instance, Nicholls et al. (2016) conclude their meta-analysis paper on the association between emotions and eating behaviour in the BED-O population by noting that the majority of existing studies

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on the topic fail to categorise more than one-third of their participants as belonging to the BED-O group. The majority of studies that were included in Nicholls et al.’s (2016) meta-analysis were included in the above literature review as well, and thus, this flaw that relates to sample sizes applies to the majority of studies that were reviewed in this paper. Still, this issue appears reasonable since BED-O individuals represent a rather small subset of the population, which may be difficult to recruit. This issue was supposed to be more thoroughly addressed during participant recruitment procedure. Specifically, it was necessary to ensure a sufficient number of BED-O participants first, and only then to collect an equal number of non-BED-O participants, which would have been matched on the basis of age, gender, and BMI. Due to the unequal number of participants in two groups, it is uncertain whether the results of this study would have been different if the equal number of participants were achieved.

The study suffered from yet another problem, and that is the reliance on self-report measures for identifying participants who display a tendency towards binge eating. As recognised by Field (2009), self-report measures are often prone to bias because participants may feel ashamed to report honest answers, especially if questionnaires deal with sensitive topics. As pointed out by Brown (2008), it is also possible that participants are presenting themselves in an ideal light within self-report questionnaires. According to Nicholls et al. (2016), an additional problem with the existing studies on the BED-O populations’ eating behaviours and coping mechanisms is that obese participants in such studies often under report their binge eating symptomatology. This may commonly occur because participants are afraid that the information they provide during research will not be kept confidential. Such problems may occur even in clinical studies, where BED-O

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individuals have contact with therapists. Due to a lack of trust in their therapists, BED-O individuals may under report their binge eating behaviours. Finally, the majority of the studies that were included in this review had a higher number of female versus male BED participants. This represents an issue because the obtained findings cannot be easily generalised to the population of male BED-O individuals. In the present research, this could have acted as a problem.