Mapping Social-Psychological Factors Associated with Adolescents' Nutritional Habits - A Scoping Review

Adolescence is a formative period for the development of dietary habits, characterized by increasing autonomy in food choices and heightened susceptibility to social influences. Although numerous studies have examined social-psychological determinants of adolescent eating, the evidence remains conceptually, theoretically, and methodologically fragmented. This scoping review mapped social-psychological factors associated with adolescents' nutritional habits and examined the methodological and theoretical characteristics of this research. Following the Participant-Concept-Context framework, Web of Science, PsycINFO, PubMed, and Scopus were systematically searched for peer-reviewed qualitative and quantitative empirical studies published since 2000 involving adolescents aged 10-19 years. A total of 101 studies were included. Social norms, social modeling, peer and family influence, social support, self-efficacy, attitudes, and motivation emerged as prominent determinants of adolescent nutritional habits. Importantly, social influences were not inherently health-promoting or health-decreasing; their effects depended substantially on their behavioral and normative valence. The evidence base was dominated by cross-sectional research, with comparatively few longitudinal, experimental, or intervention studies. Analysis of the theoretical approaches used in the studies revealed that forty-one studies lacked an explicit theoretical foundation, while the extent to which theoretical frameworks informed hypotheses, study design, and interpretation varied considerably across the remaining studies. The mechanisms linking social identity (n = 3) to dietary behavior and the role of developmental differences within adolescence (n = 2) were comparatively underexamined. Based on these findings, we propose an integrative social-psychological framework distinguishing four interrelated levels of influence: individual processes, social identities, interpersonal social processes, and the broader social context, which may support the design of theoretically more informed studies targeting adolescent nutritional behavior.