Abnormal eating attitudes, body image dissatisfaction and social physique anxiety among university students

Abstract

The study was aimed to explore the relationship between body image dissatisfaction, abnormal eating attitudes and social physique anxiety among university students. For this purpose Body Shape Questionnaire-34 (Cooper, 1986) to assess body image dissatisfaction, Disordered Eating Attitude Scale (Alvarenga, Pereira, Philippi,Estima & Croll 2010) to assess abnormal eating attitudes and Social Physique Anxiety Scale (Hart, Leary & Rejeski, 1989) to assess the social physique anxiety were used. Data was collected from Public, Semi- Government and private universities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Sample comprised 249 university students including girls (n=136) and boys (n=113) with age range 18-35 years (M=22.79, STD=2.65). Psychometric properties of scales indicted moderate to good reliability for the study sample. Results showed significant positive relationship between body image dissatisfaction and abnormal eating attitudes (r=.60, p < .01). Results also showed significant relationship between body image dissatisfaction and body mass index (r=.17, p < .01). Moreover, significant relationship between social physique anxiety and body image dissatisfaction was also revealed (r=.11, p < .01). The results manifested that body image dissatisfaction predict abnormal eating attitudes among university students (R2=.37, p=< .001). It means that body shape concerns accounts to 33% of the variance in abnormal eating attitudes. Limitations and future recommendations are also discussed.