| Summary: | Hither incidences o f eating disorders and related pathology are reported in Caucasian-
European adolescent girls as compared to adolescent boys or individuals from other ethnic
populations (Osvold & Sodowsky, 1993). Consequently, research has principally utilized
European-Caucasian girls to develop the current understanding of eating pathology in adolescent
populations (Striegel-Moore & Smolak, 2000). Thus, our knowledge of the characteristics and
correlates of eating pathology is limited to this exclusive population. T o alleviate this
shortcoming, recent literature has assessed eating pathology among European-Caucasian
adolescent boys, as well as adolescent girls and boys across various ethnic populations (Crago,
Shisslak, & Estes, 1996; Dolan, 1991). Unfortunately, despite this increase in empirical
attention, the understanding of eating pathology among ethnic minority adolescents living among
a European-Caucasian majority population remains limited. Specifically, the intention of this
study was to expanded our understanding of the relations among eating attitudes and
sociocultural attitudes towards appearance, acculturation, depression, self-esteem, selfconsciousness
and adolescent egocentrism in a sample of ethnic minority adolescent girls and
boys. This study also expanded current literature across
Results found no overall significant difference in eating pathology between minority
adolescent girls and boys. Although, adolescent girls reported a desire for overall weight loss
and adolescent boys desired overall weight gain. In addition, adolescent girls, as compared to
boys, were less likely to exercise or describe the food their family eats as healthy. Results
further indicated that girls are less aware of western sociocultural attitudes towards appearance
and were more likely than to acculturate to the western culture as compared to adolescent boys.
Correlational analysis for adolescent girls and boys revealed several significant relations
among eating pathology and many of the sociocultural and psychological variables examined in
this study. Nevertheless, when entered into a simultaneous regression analysis a single
significant predictor was found with for each gender. Public self-consciousness was found to be
the only predictor of eating pathology for adolescent girls and private self-consciousness was
found to be the only significant predictor of eating pathology in adolescent boys. Overall results
support the importance of self-consciousness as a risk factor in the development of eating
pathology among ethnic minority adolescent girls and boys. === Education, Faculty of === Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of === Graduate
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