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Body appreciation and body appearance pressure in Norwegian university students comparing exercise science students and other students

BACKGROUND: Body image is considered a core issue for public health and associates with university students’ overall health. Due to positive associations between exercise and body image, it has been suggested that students within an exercise science program might be more body appreciative compared t...

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Autores principales: Sundgot-Borgen, Christine, Sundgot-Borgen, Jorunn, Bratland-Sanda, Solfrid, Kolle, Elin, Torstveit, Monica Klungland, Svantorp-Tveiten, Kethe M. E., Mathisen, Therese Fostervold
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7977603/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33740918
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10550-0
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author Sundgot-Borgen, Christine
Sundgot-Borgen, Jorunn
Bratland-Sanda, Solfrid
Kolle, Elin
Torstveit, Monica Klungland
Svantorp-Tveiten, Kethe M. E.
Mathisen, Therese Fostervold
author_facet Sundgot-Borgen, Christine
Sundgot-Borgen, Jorunn
Bratland-Sanda, Solfrid
Kolle, Elin
Torstveit, Monica Klungland
Svantorp-Tveiten, Kethe M. E.
Mathisen, Therese Fostervold
author_sort Sundgot-Borgen, Christine
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Body image is considered a core issue for public health and associates with university students’ overall health. Due to positive associations between exercise and body image, it has been suggested that students within an exercise science program might be more body appreciative compared to other students. On the other hand, the strong societal idealization of the athletic body may expose them to a pressure of having a specific body appearance, which may result in unfavorable health consequences. Nevertheless, studies investigating these hypotheses are lacking. We therefore aimed to explore the level and associations of body appreciation, body appearance pressure, body image related mental health constructs, physical activity, and exercise, in Norwegian university exercise science and non-health reference students. METHOD: Male and female exercise science students (n = 517) and reference students (n = 476), from nine large universities in Norway took part in this cross-sectional study. Participants responded to the Body appreciation scale-2, a self-developed questionnaire on body appearance pressure, Physical Appearance Comparison Scale-Revised, Sociocultural attitudes towards appearance questionnaire-4R, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Satisfaction with Life Scale, and questions about physical activity and exercise. Between group differences were analyzed using student independent t-test and ANCOVA for parametric data and Chi-square test for categorical data, and associations were evaluated by Person’s correlation. P-values ≤0.05 were defined as significant. RESULTS: Female exercise science students had higher scores on body appreciation compared to reference students. No group difference was found in males. A high percentage of students reported experiencing body appearance pressure, with 69 and 85% among male and female exercise science students, and 57 and 83% among male and female reference students. Fitness centers were the settings where most respondents experienced body appearance pressure. Body appreciation was strongly associated with favorable scores on body image related mental health constructs, while personally experienced body appearance pressure associated with destructive scores on the same constructs. CONCLUSION: Body appearance pressure is an issue among university students regardless of study program. Actions to promote body appreciation and prevent body appearance pressure may include an implementation of media literacy, body functionality, and exercise as topics within the education program to safeguard students’ health and well-being. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRY: No. NCT04256967. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-10550-0.
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spelling pubmed-79776032021-03-22 Body appreciation and body appearance pressure in Norwegian university students comparing exercise science students and other students Sundgot-Borgen, Christine Sundgot-Borgen, Jorunn Bratland-Sanda, Solfrid Kolle, Elin Torstveit, Monica Klungland Svantorp-Tveiten, Kethe M. E. Mathisen, Therese Fostervold BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Body image is considered a core issue for public health and associates with university students’ overall health. Due to positive associations between exercise and body image, it has been suggested that students within an exercise science program might be more body appreciative compared to other students. On the other hand, the strong societal idealization of the athletic body may expose them to a pressure of having a specific body appearance, which may result in unfavorable health consequences. Nevertheless, studies investigating these hypotheses are lacking. We therefore aimed to explore the level and associations of body appreciation, body appearance pressure, body image related mental health constructs, physical activity, and exercise, in Norwegian university exercise science and non-health reference students. METHOD: Male and female exercise science students (n = 517) and reference students (n = 476), from nine large universities in Norway took part in this cross-sectional study. Participants responded to the Body appreciation scale-2, a self-developed questionnaire on body appearance pressure, Physical Appearance Comparison Scale-Revised, Sociocultural attitudes towards appearance questionnaire-4R, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Satisfaction with Life Scale, and questions about physical activity and exercise. Between group differences were analyzed using student independent t-test and ANCOVA for parametric data and Chi-square test for categorical data, and associations were evaluated by Person’s correlation. P-values ≤0.05 were defined as significant. RESULTS: Female exercise science students had higher scores on body appreciation compared to reference students. No group difference was found in males. A high percentage of students reported experiencing body appearance pressure, with 69 and 85% among male and female exercise science students, and 57 and 83% among male and female reference students. Fitness centers were the settings where most respondents experienced body appearance pressure. Body appreciation was strongly associated with favorable scores on body image related mental health constructs, while personally experienced body appearance pressure associated with destructive scores on the same constructs. CONCLUSION: Body appearance pressure is an issue among university students regardless of study program. Actions to promote body appreciation and prevent body appearance pressure may include an implementation of media literacy, body functionality, and exercise as topics within the education program to safeguard students’ health and well-being. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRY: No. NCT04256967. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-10550-0. BioMed Central 2021-03-19 /pmc/articles/PMC7977603/ /pubmed/33740918 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10550-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Sundgot-Borgen, Christine
Sundgot-Borgen, Jorunn
Bratland-Sanda, Solfrid
Kolle, Elin
Torstveit, Monica Klungland
Svantorp-Tveiten, Kethe M. E.
Mathisen, Therese Fostervold
Body appreciation and body appearance pressure in Norwegian university students comparing exercise science students and other students
title Body appreciation and body appearance pressure in Norwegian university students comparing exercise science students and other students
title_full Body appreciation and body appearance pressure in Norwegian university students comparing exercise science students and other students
title_fullStr Body appreciation and body appearance pressure in Norwegian university students comparing exercise science students and other students
title_full_unstemmed Body appreciation and body appearance pressure in Norwegian university students comparing exercise science students and other students
title_short Body appreciation and body appearance pressure in Norwegian university students comparing exercise science students and other students
title_sort body appreciation and body appearance pressure in norwegian university students comparing exercise science students and other students
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7977603/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33740918
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10550-0
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