Should body-image scales designed for adults be used with adolescents?
For many people, there is a discrepancy between perceived and desired physical appearance. Attempts have been made to quantify this discrepancy as a measure of body-image disturbance: however, the use of measurement scales which are not population-specific may bias the assessment. To investigate whether ratings of body-images were affected by the scale employed, 57 male and 40 female adolescents were tested using both adult and adolescent body-figure silhouette scales. Significant between-scale differences were found, with adolescents displaying consistently lower body-image ratings when viewing adult as opposed to adolescent scales. In addition, between-sex differences in discrepancy scores and correlations between discrepancy scores and another measure of body satisfaction were significantly influenced by the scale employed. The results confirm the need for population-specific measurement scales and the implementation of standardised assessment procedures.
Byrne
N M
NM
School of Human Movement Studies Queensland University of Technology, Queensland, Australia. N.byrne@qut.edu.au
Hills
A P
AP
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D001823:Body Composition; D001828:Body Image; D001835:Body Weight; D004038:Diet, Reducing / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010379:Peer Group; D010552:Personality Assessment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results