Measurement of Body Image

Body image is often measured by asking the subject to rate their current and ideal body shape using a series of depictions. The difference between these two values is the measure of body dissatisfaction. There are many negative effects that body dissatisfaction can have these include: that some research suggests a link between body dissatisfaction in girls and smoking. Also having this body dissatisfaction can affect a girl’s comfort with her sexuality when she’s older and may lead them to consider cosmetic surgery (Wolf, 2009).

Monteath and McCabe found that 44% of women express negative feelings about both individual body parts and their bodies as a whole. Psychology Today found that 56% of the women and about 40% of the men who responded to their survey in 1997 were dissatisfied with their overall appearance. American youth (37.7% of males and 51% of females) express dissatisfaction with their bodies.  In America, the dieting industry earns roughly 40 billion dollars per year. A Harvard study (Fat Talk, Harvard University Press) published in 2000 revealed that 86% of teenage girls are on a diet or believe they should be on one. Dieting has become a very common thing to not only teenage girls but even younger children as well. The National Eating Disorders Association has found out that 51% of 9 and 10 year old girls actually feel better about themselves when they are on a diet (Wolf, 2009).

“Currently over 40 instruments for the measurement of body image exist (Thompson, Altabe, Johnson, & Stormer, 2010)”. All of these instruments can be put into three categories: figure preferences, video projection techniques, and questionnaires. Because there are so many ways to measure body image, it makes it difficult to draw meaningful research generalizations. Many factors have to be taken into account when measuring body image, including gender, ethnicity, culture, and age.

1.) Figure preferences

In figure preferences the use of silhouettes is the most common used method. There are many issues with this method though; for one, the drawings are not realistic looking and were originally portrayed as adults so it made them unsuitable for children. Silhouettes are used to show to the subject and have them react to the different body types.

2.) Video projection techniques

In one study participants were shown a series of images flashing before them; each image was a picture of them but either increased weight or decreased weight. They were measured in self-report by responding to the pictures. Also they were measured by startle-based measures and testing their eyeblink response. “The startle response is a complex set of physiological changes that occur in response to unexpected and intense stimulus (Grillon & Baas, 2003).” These measurements can be useful because “Objective, psychophysiological measures, like the affect modulated startle eyeblink response, are less subject to reporting bias (Grillon & Baas, 2003).”

3.) Questionnaires

Questionnaires are another very commonly used method of measurement. One example of a questionnaire is BASS; it is a 9-item subscale of the Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire. It uses a rating scale from −2 to +2 and assesses eight body areas and attributes and overall appearance (face, hair, lower torso, mid-torso, upper torso, muscle tone, height, and weight) (Giovannelli, Cash, Henson, & Engel, 2012). Questionnaires can have confounding variable though. For instance, “Acquiescent response style (ARS), or the tendency to agree with items on a survey, is more common among individuals from Asian and African cultures (Chen, Lee, & Stevenson, 2011; Dolnicar & Grun, 2007; Hamamura, Heine, & Paulhus, 2009)”.