Preliminary communication
https://doi.org/10.31299/ksi.25.1.3
Dissatisfaction with physical appearance and behaviors associated with eating disorders in adolescents
Goran Livazović
orcid.org/0000-0002-0277-5534
; Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Department for Pedagogy
Iva Mudrinić
orcid.org/0000-0003-1426-0228
; mag. paed. et hist.
Abstract
The paper analyses a survey conducted with 148 adolescent participants. The goal was to examine adolescent attitudes concerning their personal body image satisfaction, the prevalence of behaviours inherent to eating disorders, and their relationships with family and peers. Results were obtained using descriptive statistics, t-tests for independent samples, ANOVA and correlation analysis. The body image satisfaction was surveyed via a „Desired and current body type scale“. The results indicate that 48.6% of girls desire a thinner body, 38.7% of them report complete satisfaction, while 12.6% expressed a desire to increase in weight. Girls are most dissatisfied with their abdominal area (31.5%), legs (28%), and thighs (20.7%). Boys report dissatisfaction with their chest area (35.1%), legs (21.6%) and abdominal area (18.9%). In total, 52.7% of participants report feeling overweight, with 65.5% reporting a strong desire to lose weight. Girls report significantly lower levels of body image satisfaction (p<0.001), higher levels of bulimia (p<0.01) and binge eating (p<0.05) than boys. Younger adolescents report significant levels of orthorexia-related behaviour (p<0.05). A low and negative correlation between the quality of relationships in the family and bulimia-related behaviour was found (r=-0.18, p<0.05). Body image dissatisfaction correlates strongly with both anorexia-related behaviour (r=0.76, p<0.001) and bulimia-related behaviour (r=0.63, p<0.001), and moderately with binge eating (r=0.58, p<0.001). The correlation between peer relationships and body image satisfaction, anorexia-, bulimia-, orthorexia-related behaviour and binge eating was not established
Keywords
adolescents; family, peers; eating disorders; anorexia; bulimia; orthorexia
Hrčak ID:
181160
URI
Publication date:
10.5.2017.
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