Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Oct 27, 2020
Date Accepted: May 31, 2021
Body image distress and its associations: findings from a web-based international sample of men and women across the adult lifespan
ABSTRACT
Background:
Previous research in body image distress has chiefly relied on small sample sizes that are generally homogenous in age or sex, has lacked a comprehensive analysis of multiple psychosocial domains and often limited to one geographical region. The research presented in this paper extends the international literature using the results from the web-based Global Health & Wellbeing Survey 2015. The survey included a large sample of both men and women across the adult lifespan (aged 16 years and older) from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom (UK) or the United States (US.
Objective:
The chief objectives of this study were to examine body image distress across the adult lifespan (16 and over) and sex and assess the association between body image distress and various psychosocial risk and protective factors.
Methods:
Data were extracted from the Global Health & Wellbeing Survey 2015, an online international self-report survey with 10,765 respondents, and compared to previous surveys conducted in 2009, 2012 and 2014.
Results:
The body image distress of young Australian's (16 to 25 years) rose by 33.0% from 2009 to 2015. Internationally in 2015, 75.2% of 16 to 25-year-olds reported body image distress, which declined with age. Women reported higher levels of body image distress compared to men (60.8% vs. 41.5%). Sex, age, current dieting status, perception of weight, psychological distress, alcohol and/or other substance misuse, and wellbeing significantly explained 24% of the variance in body image distress in a linear regression (F(15, 4966)=105.8, p<0.001).
Conclusions:
This research demonstrates the significant interplay between body image distress and psychosocial factors across age and sex.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.