How adolescent boys perceive their bodies, body parts, and weight: letting adolescent boys' voices be heard

Adolescent Body Dissatisfaction in Contrasting Socioeconomic Milieus, Coming from a French and Luxembourgish Context

Purpose: To analyze the relationships between body mass index (BMI), ideal body, current declared body shape, and gap between ideal and declared body shape, and the associations that these have with social and cultural factors among 329 adolescents (11 to 15 years i.e., at two stages of adolescence, the early and late adolescence), attending an international school in Luxembourg, and 281 from Paris. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted using an online questionnaire. Missing data were addressed using the data augmentation method in a Bayesian framework. Results: For both sets, higher the BMI and bigger their current body shape (CBS), the slimmer their ideal body shape, especially for those who perceive a link between body shape and beauty. For girls, slimness is a shared ideal; for boys, older they are, more they want a muscular body shape. Most students want slimmer bodies, but in affluent or intermediate social milieu students in relations to identification to personalities such as celebrities, while students from modest milieus, this is expressed in relation to success in love. In addition, they declared that their “talk diet with friends” were associated with large gap between ideal and declared body shape. Conclusions: A social control norm was revealed involving a displacement of values affecting body weight and health in the late stage of adolescence to early adolescence, especially for boys.

Factors Influencing Parents' and Children's Misperception of Children's Weight Status: a Systematic Review of Current Research

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

Misperception of children's weight status is prevalent among parents and children themselves and may impact parents' and children's health behaviors. This study was conducted in order to provide a descriptive systematic review of research on factors influencing parents' and children's misperceptions of children's weight status published in the past 5 years.

RECENT FINDINGS

Factors studied most often in relation to parents' and children's misperception included children's weight status, gender, and age, as well as parents' weight status, parental education levels and socioeconomic status, and ethnicity. Most determinants that were found to have a significant influence on misperception in parents also did in children. The literature on misperception of children's weight status is extensive. Most determinants assessed in included studies were known determinants of childhood obesity. Further research should be directed toward better understanding the impact of weight status perception (whether it is accurate or not) on health behaviors and weight gain over time.

Adolescent Boys' Reactions to Using Avatars to Represent Their Bodies

The purpose of this study was to provide a detailed description of completing the Attitudes and Avatars Instrument in the classroom and explore the feasibility and acceptability of the instrument.

METHODS

The descriptive study included three written open-ended questions for data collection to which young adolescent boys responded after completing the Attitudes and Avatars Instrument.

RESULTS

Fifty-nine boys between 11 and 14 years of age completed the instrument in the time allotted and had an overall positive reaction.

CONCLUSION

As the Attitudes and Avatars Instrument continues to develop as a screening instrument, it is imperative to obtain feedback from boys of diverse races and ethnicities.

Attitudes and avatars instrument: development and initial testing

BACKGROUND

The purpose of the study was to develop and test the initial psychometric properties of the ATTitudes and Avatars INstrument (ATTAIN). The integrated behavior model guided instrument development to measure the young adolescent boys' attitudes, intentions and actions to change their bodies.

METHODS

An adolescent health expert panel and young adolescent boys were recruited to test for content validity. Fifty-nine boys 11 to 14 years of age were recruited at a middle school in the USA during physical education class to conduct a pilot study to test for internal consistency and test-retest reliability.

RESULTS

The ATTAIN was found to have high content validity, slightly below recommended levels for internal consistency, and varied test-retest reliability.

CONCLUSION

The long-term goal of the development and testing of the ATTAIN is to make it available to researchers and professionals to screen and focus on adolescents' perceptions of their bodies and using those perceptions to attain and maintain healthy bodies. The results of this study suggest preliminarily a theoretically derived instrument with appropriate content for young adolescent boys and variable reliability. The attitudes, intentions, and actions survey items and avatars as measured by the ATTAIN, were meaningful to the boys. The ATTAIN has potential to be used as a screening instrument for young adolescents boys and understanding their attitudes toward their bodies; however, it will require continued development and testing to establish construct and discriminant validity.