The present study purports to clarify the relationship between body image, perfectionism, and body change strategies among adolescent boys, and then, to set and verify the structural model of the body change strategies.
For this research, 433 adolesc...
The present study purports to clarify the relationship between body image, perfectionism, and body change strategies among adolescent boys, and then, to set and verify the structural model of the body change strategies.
For this research, 433 adolescent boys in the age group of 15 to 17 were selected. All respondents completed five subscales of the Body Image and Body Change Inventory(Ricciardelli & McCabe, 2000). The Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale; MPS (Hewitt & Flett, 1991) was used to assess perfectionism. Using SPSS(15.0) program, correlation analysis are employed. And these data are analyzed using structural equation modeling with AMOS(7.0) program.
Research results are given below.
Firstly, the structure equation model that body image dissatisfaction has influence on the body change strategies by the medium of perfectionism and body image importance was proved to be appropriate. Body image dissatisfaction significantly related with body image importance and perfectionism, and body image importance and perfectionism significantly related with strategies to change weight.
Secondly, this study examined the explanatory model of body image dissatisfaction, perfectionism, and body image importance is different depending on the subtype of the body change strategies, such as strategies to decrease weight, increase weight, and increase muscle tone. First of all, the model for the strategies to decrease weight was suitable only after eliminating some variables. This model included only the path from body image dissatisfaction and body image importance to the strategies to decrease weight which are significant. Secondly, in the strategies to increase weight and increase muscle tone, the model that body image dissatisfaction uses body image importance and perfectionism as the mediate variables to reach the weight gain was suitable.
Finally, we set the final model including the body change strategies (to increase weight, increase muscle tone) except for the strategies to decrease weight, the this model showed the best fit index.
In conclusion, the findings showed that the adolescent boys who tried to use the strategy to 'decrease weight' showed different pattern with the adolescent boys who tried to use the strategy to 'increase weight' or 'increase muscle tone'. Based on these things, we suggested that the body change strategy appeared in adolescent boys might be more complicated than the strategy appeared in adolescent girls did, so the interaction between gender and culture should be considered in the intervention for adolescent boys.