Body Image Dissatisfaction Among Third, Fourth, and Fifth Grade Children. Procedure
Procedure
The investigator met one on one with each child. The child was asked to use the pictorial instrument to make three figure selections:
1. Self: Which picture looks the most like you? (Same gender) This question was used to assess the child’s current figure.
2. Ideal: Which picture shows the way you want to look? (Same gender) This question was used to assess the child’s ideal figure.
3. Ideal Other Child: Which picture shows the way you think is best for girls/boys to look? (Other gender).
Each response was scored on a 7-point scale, with 1 representing the thinnest figure and 7 representing the largest figure. The scale was not visible to the participants.
Data Analysis
Data were entered and analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Multiple analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to examine differences between gender and grade on the following five variables: current self; ideal self; ideal figure for opposite gender; current self minus ideal self; and body mass index (BMI). The significance level for all analysis was set at .05.
Results
Body image dissatisfaction was determined by the formula, current figure – ideal figure. A positive number represents the desire to be thinner (current – ideal > 0), while a negative number represents a desire to be larger (current – ideal < 0).
Overall results indicated that 50.6% of the children surveyed were dissatisfied with their current body shape or size (their current figure differed from their ideal figure), 41.8% wanted to be thinner, while 8.8% wanted to be larger. Fifty percent of the girls were dissatisfied with their current body shape, with 45.1% wishing to be thinner. Boys showed similar trends, with 48.9% dissatisfied and 38.9% wishing to be thinner. A greater percentage of boys wanted to be larger than their current body shape (12.3%) compared to girls (4.9%). Figure 2 shows the percentage of body dissatisfaction by grade.
Body image dissatisfaction was determined by the formula, current figure – ideal figure. A positive number represents the desire to be thinner (current – ideal > 0), while a negative number represents a desire to be larger (current – ideal < 0). Body image satisfaction is represented by current size – ideal size = 0.
When asked, “Which figure looks most like you,” mean scores for all of the girls combined was 3.97 (SD= .08) and for all of the boys combined was 3.84 (SD = .07). When asked, “Which figure shows the way you want to look,” mean scores for all of the girls was 3.41 (SD = .08) and for all of the boys was 3.52 (SD = .06). Lastly, when asked, “Which figure do you think is best for the opposite gender to look,” the girls selected a mean score of 3.75 (SD=.06) for the boys, while the boys selected a mean score of 3.59 (SD = .05) for the girls.