Pathways to serious dieting: significant insights from discontinuity

This paper outlines a strategy for systematically examining the discontinuity in pathways to serious dieting.

Eight hundred and twenty-three adolescent females were recruited from six high schools in metropolitan Sydney, Australia. They completed a battery of measures that assessed perceived social influences to diet, predisposition to conformity, protective skills, aspects of positive familial context, and dieting-related attitudes and status. Testing took place over two occasions approximately 10 months apart.

Family context, protective skills, and a predisposition to conformity were found to differentiate the vulnerable girls who reported high levels of social influence from those who did not. However, those variables did not differentiate those with high social influence who seriously diet from nondieters. Body mass index, drive for thinness, and body dissatisfaction differentiated all of the comparison groups tested. Age did not consistently differentiate these groups.

The findings can tell us what seems to protect girls who appear susceptible to social influences from becoming serious dieters.