Purpose: To examine college athletic trainers' confidence in helping female athletes who have eating disorders. Significance: College female athletes are at increased risk for the development of eating disorders. The findings of this study may be useful in determining how confident college athletic trainers feel in identifying, intervening, and helping female athletes who have eating disorders. Design: During the winter of 2000, a four-page, 53-item survey was mailed to head-certified athletic trainers at all NCAA Division IA and IAA institutions. Names and addresses were obtained through the NADA 2000 directory. A two-wave mailing design was used to increase response rate. The survey consisted of five subscales: 1) efficacy expectation, 2) outcome expectation, 3) outcome value, 4) knowledge, and 5) experience in dealing with eating disorders. Content validity was established by review from a national panel of experts. Stability reliability ranged from .66 to .73 for the subscales. Results: A total of 171 trainers returned completed surveys (77%). Most were male (59%), white (92%), and worked at either a suburban or urban institution. While virtually all trainers (91%) had dealt with a female athlete with an eating disorder, only one in four (27%) felt confident in identifying a female athlete with an eating disorder and only one in three (38%) felt confident in asking an athlete if she had an eating disorder. Three-fourths of trainers (75%) worked at an institution that had no policy on how to handle eating disorders. However, trainers who worked at an institution that had an eating disorder policy felt significantly more confident than trainers working at an institution with no eating disorder policy in identifying and dealing with athletes with eating disorders. Most trainers (93%) felt that increased attention needs to be placed on the prevention of eating disorders among college female athletes. Conclusions: Based on the findings of this study, college athletic programs are encouraged to develop and implement eating disorder policies which can be used to direct athletic trainers on how to handle and prevent eating disorders. Continuing education on the prevention of eating disorders among athletes is also strongly recommended. Handouts and additional recommendations will be offered in this presentation. Keyword(s): athletics/sports, college level issues, health promotion