The Scope of Body Image Disturbance - the Big Picture An Overview of Assessment and Treatment Strategies Sociocultural Theory - the Media and Society Social Comparison Processes Appearance-Related Feedback Interpersonal Factors Peers, Parents and Perfect Strangers Feminist Perspectives Sexual Abuse and Sexual Harassment Behavioural Aspects of Disturbance - Conditioning, Context and Avoidance Cognitive Processing Models Future Directions - Integrative Theories, Multidimensional Assessment and Multicomponent Interventions

Exacting Beauty: Theory, Assessment, and Treatment of Body Image Disturbance

Research suggests that exposure to mass media depicting the thin-ideal body may be linked to body image disturbance in women. This meta-analysis examined experimental and correlational studies testing the links between media exposure to women's body dissatisfaction, internalization of the thin ideal, and eating behaviors and beliefs with a sample of 77 studies that yielded 141 effect sizes. The mean effect sizes were small to moderate (ds = -.28, -.39, and -.30, respectively). Effects for some outcome variables were moderated by publication year and study design. The findings support the notion that exposure to media images depicting the thin-ideal body is related to body image concerns for women.

The role of the media in body image concerns among women: A meta-analysis of experimental and correlational studies.

The Body Appreciation Scale: Development and psychometric evaluation

The EDE is a semistructured interview which has been developed as a measure of the specific psychopathology of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. To establish its discriminant validity it was administered to 100 patients with anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa and to 42 controls. The two groups differed significantly on all items. Five subscales were derived on rational grounds and evaluated on the two populations. The alpha coefficients for each subscale indicated a satisfactory degree of internal consistency. The EDE provides clinicians and research workers with a detailed and comprehensive profile of the psychopathological features of patients with eating disorders.

The validity of the eating disorder examination and its subscales.

The prevailing view in popular culture and the psychological literature is that White women have greater body dissatisfaction than women of color. In this meta-analysis, 6 main effect sizes were obtained for differences among Asian American, Black, Hispanic, and White women with a sample of 98 studies, yielding 222 effect sizes. The average d for the White-Black comparison was 0.29, indicating that White women are more dissatisfied, but the difference is small. All other comparisons were smaller, and many were close to zero. The findings directly challenge the belief that there are large differences in dissatisfaction between White and all non-White women and suggest that body dissatisfaction may not be the golden girl problem promoted in the literature. Implications for theory and treatment are discussed.

Ethnicity and body dissatisfaction among women in the United States: a meta-analysis.

Concerns about body shape are common among young women in Western cultures, and, in an extreme form, they constitute a central feature of the eating disorders anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. To date there has been no satisfactory measure of such concerns. A self-report instrument, the Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ) has therefore been developed. The items that constitute this measure were derived by conducting semistructured interviews with various groups of women including patients with anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. The BSQ has been administered to three samples of young women in the community as well as to a group of patients with bulimia nervosa. The concurrent and discriminant validity of the measure have been shown to be good. The BSQ provides a means of investigating the role of concerns about body shape in the development, maintenance, and treatment of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.

Christopher G. Fairbum

Papers

The development and validation of the body shape questionnaire