engleski

Predicting Adolescents’ Body Change Strategies: Body Dissatisfaction And Body Image Importance

Body change strategies can be defined as a series of different behaviours focused on changing body shape, size and/or weight. Body dissatisfaction is a discrepancy between the ideal and the current body size. During adolescence body image, as it gets compromised or distorted because of the pubertal development, becomes more important for self-perception. More studies are needed to better understand the relationship between body dissatisfaction, body image importance and body change strategies. Previous research have focused more on body dissatisfaction in adolescent girls than boys, as well as on body change strategies related to losing weight than to those of weight increasing and muscle tone and size changing. Thus, the aim of this research was to test the predictors of various body change strategies, including strategies to increase weight, increase muscle tone and muscle size, in both adolescent girls and boys. 1056 primary and secondary school students aged from 10 to 19 years (M=15.14, SD=2.55 ; 54% girls, 46% boys) filled in the Body Image and Body Change Questionnaire (McCabe & Ricciardelli, 2002). The results of hierarchical regression analysis show that gender, body mass index, body dissatisfaction and body image importance are significant predictors of some of the body change strategies. Adolescents of both sexes with higher body mass index, adolescents who give more importance to their physical appearance and girls practice more strategies to lose weight while boys practice more strategies to increase their body mass, muscle tone and size which can be explained by the sociocultural influences on body image in girls and in boys that differ. Findings of this research indicate that sex and body image importance are predictors of all measured body change strategies therefore emphasising the significant role of body image importance that is often neglected in research on body image and body change strategies.

body dissatisfaction, body change strategies, adolescents

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