Social pressures and body image as contributors to eating habits among collegiate women athletes.
Year: 2007
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Researchers have often stated that when examining the development of eating disorders, it is fruitful to take a multi-dimensional approach in order to identify the role of several contributing factors.Unfortunately, not only has this framework been used all too rarely in the general research on eating disorders, it has hardly ever been used when looking at the development of disordered eating among athletes.To this end, relationships among self-reported symptoms of disordered eating, body image dissatisfaction, and two types of perceived pressure for thinness (social and athletic) were investigated in a sample of 206 women collegiate athletes from two Division I schools, representing 12 different sports.A series of regression analyses, and a test of mediation, were used to analyze the data.It was hypothesized that body image dissatisfaction and perceived pressure for thinness would each account for a significant amount of variance in symptoms of disordered eating, and that body image dissatisfaction would mediate the relationship between both kinds of perceived pressure for thinness and disordered eating.Support was garnered for several of the hypotheses.Specifically, the independent variables of body image dissatisfaction, social pressure for thinness, and athletic pressure for thinness each uniquely accounted for variance in disordered eating.Somewhat differing from the hypothesized relationship, body image dissatisfaction functioned as a partial mediator, rather than a full mediator, in the relationship between social pressure
Author: Jill M. Mallin
Institution: University of Akron
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2237359125