The relationship among body dissatisfaction, social physique anxiety and coping strategies among university students

Abstract

The present research aimed to investigate the relationship among body dissatisfaction, social physique anxiety and coping strategies among university students. Employing the technique of purposive convenience sampling data was collected from (N = 240) university students from the area of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The age of participants, ranged between 17-25 years. Multi-dimensional Body Self Relation Questionnaire Appearance Scale (Cash, 2000) was used to assess body dissatisfaction. It has 5 dimensions; appearance evaluation, appearance orientation, body area satisfaction, overweight preoccupation and self-classified weight. Social physique anxiety scale (SPAS; Hart, Leary, & Rejeski, 1989) was used to assess social physique anxiety. Brief cope scale (Carver, 1997) was used in order to assess which coping strategy is frequently used by young adults. Results indicated that there is positive relationship between overweight preoccupations, self- classified weight, problem focused coping and social physique. Social physique anxiety is positively related with religious denial coping and active avoidant coping. Overweight preoccupation is positively con-elated with appearance orientation. Result of multip le regression analysis indicated that problem focused, active avoidant and religious denial coping are positive predictor of body dissatisfaction and positive coping is the negative predictor of body dissatisfaction. Results of t analysis on gender differences showed the significant mean differences on appearance evaluation and appearance orientation. Results were discussed in the light of existing literature.