Validation and application of a German version of the Dietarian Identity Questionnaire: Revealing differences between omnivores,vegetarians, and vegans

The Dietarian Identity Questionnaire (DIQ; Rosenfeld & Burrow, 2018) assesses how an individual thinks, feels, and behaves regarding the consumption or eschewal of animal products. This instrument offers a useful method for understanding how omnivores, vegetarians, and vegans alike construct their eating behaviours. In the current study (N = 961), we validated a German translation of the DIQ – the DIQ-D – and compared the dietarian identity profiles of omnivores, vegetarians, and vegans. Confirmatory factor analyses replicated the factor structure reported for the DIQ in English-speaking samples. Compared to omnivores, vegetarians considered their diet to be more central to their overall sense of identity, felt stronger motivations to follow their diet, adhered to their diet more strictly, evaluated their dietary in-group more favourably, evaluated their dietary out-group more negatively, and felt as though their dietary in-group was judged more negatively by others. For all of these effects, vegans reported more extreme scores than did vegetarians. Exploratory analyses of more nuanced dietary subgroups revealed differences in dietarian identity profiles between vegans who consume honey versus vegans who eschew honey and between pescetarians who self-identify as vegetarians versus pescetarians who do not. Our findings suggest that the DIQ-D offers a valuable method for identifying psychological correlates of people’s dietary relationships with animal products.