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Updated: Aug 11, 2026
07:07
Errors as a Means of Reducing Impulsive Food Choice
Published on: June 5, 2016
Pathways to serious dieting: significant insights from discontinuity
1School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
The International Journal of Eating Disorders
|October 31, 2000
Summary
This study identifies protective factors that shield adolescent girls from social pressures to diet. Understanding these factors helps prevent serious dieting behaviors in vulnerable teens.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Public Health
- Adolescent Health
Background:
- Adolescent dieting is a significant public health concern.
- Social influences play a role in dieting behaviors among teenage girls.
- Understanding protective factors is crucial for intervention strategies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To outline a strategy for examining pathways to serious dieting in adolescent females.
- To identify factors that protect vulnerable girls from succumbing to social pressures to diet.
Main Methods:
- Recruited 823 adolescent females from six high schools in Sydney, Australia.
- Administered measures assessing social influences, conformity, protective skills, family context, and dieting attitudes.
- Data collected over two occasions, 10 months apart.
Main Results:
- Family context, protective skills, and conformity predisposition differentiated girls with high social influence from those without.
- These factors did not differentiate serious dieters from non-dieters among those with high social influence.
- Body mass index, drive for thinness, and body dissatisfaction differentiated all comparison groups; age did not.
Conclusions:
- Family context and protective skills appear to buffer adolescent girls against social pressures to diet.
- These findings offer insights into preventing serious dieting behaviors in susceptible adolescent populations.
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