| Summary: | 碩士 === 中國文化大學 === 兒童福利研究所 === 89 === A major concern in one of the stages in adolescent development is to accept one’s own body and facial characteristics. Hence, body image becomes one of the major elements, which constitute self-acknowledgement. The acceptance of one’s own body image is also a major task for teenagers. Many studies from the literature revealed that the majority of the adolescent is not satisfied with his or her own body image. Drastic actions, which may cause physical and psychological damage, such as unhealthy diet, vomit induction, and weight-control medications have been taken in order to lose weight or promote body image. Therefore, from a wholistic social welfare viewpoint including areas of education, personal hygiene, preventive care and early intervention, how to provide services to promote both psychological and physical health for adolescence, to assist them to go through the changes of teenage smoothly, to establish a healthy body image, to accept and respect the body images of self and others, and to avoid inappropriate means of weight control that can cause psychological and physical damage are valuable lessons to study and explore.
Based on the above-mentioned motivations, the objects of this research are as follows:
1.To understand the body image of adolescence.
2.To explore the relationships among adolescent body image, self-esteem and other social factors.
3.To modify the self body image measurement.
Samplings include 481 middle and high school students (266 male and 215 female) between the age of 13 and 18 for questionnaire survey. The tool of research used in the study is a questionnaire designed to measure the correlation among adolescent body image, self-esteem and other social factors. The questionnaire consists of six categories including individual background information, body image scale, individual attitude scale, parental influence scale, peer pressure influence scale, and media coverage influence scale.
Statistical software, SPSS for windows 8.0, was used for data analysis. Several other statistical methods including descriptive statistics, t-test, single-variable variance analysis, one-way ANOVA, product-moment correlation, and multiple regression analysis were also used to better illustrate the results.
The findings of this research are as follows:
1.Adolescent weight control and body sculpture experience:
Based on the data analysis of this study, 35% of teenage people have taken certain means of weight control or body sculpture. The most popular solution is workout (37.7%), while fruit based diet the secondary(13.1%). The least used mean is low-calorie diet(10.5). Cross age studies show that 22.9% of people under age thirteen has tried out certain means of weight control or body sculpture. The percentage for age fourteen is 37.9%, 29.6% for age fifteen, 26.8% for age sixteen, 41.4% for age seventeen, and 33.6% for age eighteen.
2.The current condition of body image for general adolescence:
Statistics from this study show that 54.3% of the adolescence is generally satisfied with his or her own body while 24.1% feel unsatisfied and 21.6% feel greatly satisfied. Gender- wise speaking, the male adolescence is usually unsatisfied with his weight and height. Besides weight and height, the female adolescence is usually concerned about her hip, thighs and legs. There are 66.5% of the adolescent population that put great emphasis on their attire and appearance; 52% is highly satisfied with their stamina; 46.6% pays nominal attention to the maintenance and strengthening of the stamina; 44.1% feel fairly healthy; 70.6% heed seriously over living a healthy life style; 53.4% regard themselves as over-weighted; 21.2% try to control or lose weight by being on diets or refrain from eating.
3.Male adolescence exhibit their body image more positively and aggressively than female adolescence.
4.The degree of satisfaction and focus on “ self outward appearance evaluation”, “ appearance emphasis degree” and “fitness emphasis degree” varies by age among adolescence.
5.There is a positive correlation between self-esteem and body image for adolescence.
6.There is a positive correlation among social factors including the attitude of parents, media influence and adolescent body image. A positive high correlation appears between parental attention and adolescent satisfaction on health, weight, and stamina. There is also a positive correlation between media coverage influence/evaluation and the self-perception of body image among adolescence.
7.Six variables including gender, self-esteem, moral support, negative mentality, degree of attention, and degree of recognition can generate a combined predictable variance of 32.1% for adolescent body image. Among the six variables, self-esteem is the best indicator of predictability for adolescent body image with explained variation of 17.4. The secondary indicators are moral support and gender under the category of peer pressure influence with explained variation of 7.4% and 3.6%. A combined predictability variance of 28.4% can be derived from the three variables.
In conclusion, we will arrive at some suggestions based on the results and discussions of this research.
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