Body Image, Eating Disorders and Obesity: Assessment of Youth in Saudi Arabia

Body image is a multidimensional construct that involves mental representations of the body, including the size and shape of body structures and feelings, cognition, and behaviours related to them [1]. The dramatic lifestyle change going from high school to college is a stressor that has been shown to influence the risk of weight gain and disrupt eating patterns in college students [2, 3]. Eating disorders are complex conditions that involve a combination of long-standing behavioural, emotional, psychological, interpersonal, and social factors [4]. Eating disorders and obesity are serious problems affecting university students [5-7]. Project Objectives 1. To compare body image and eating disorders among different categories of obesity. 2. To examine relationship between different categories of obesity with body image and eating disorders. 3. To study association of physical activity with body image and eating disorder. Methods Participants Sixty male participants from King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals will be selected randomly following exclusion criteria. The age of the students will range from 18 - 25 years. On the basis of self-reported BMI, three categories will be formed as obese 30.0 34.99 kg/m2, severely obese 35.00 39.99 kg/m2 and morbidly obese 40.00 kg/m2. Study Design The participants will be asked to provide demographic profile like (name, age, height, weight, course of study, time spent on physical activity). The registered students will be explained test procedures verbally and queries if any will be clarified. A written informed consent will be obtained prior to the enrolment and confidentiality will be ensured. Exclusion Criteria will be: anyone who did not complete minimum one semester in any undergraduate program, participants who stay outside the campus, who are undergoing body image or obesity-related therapy will be excluded from the study. Measures Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire Appearance Scale (MBSRQ-AS; Cash, 2000) is a widely used self-reported inventory for the assessment of the body image construct. It measures the attitude towards the different aspects of body image[12]. The Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q; Fairburn & Beglin, 2008) assess the attitudinal and behavioural aspects of eating disorders over a 28 days time period [13]. Physical activity of the participants will be assessed using IPAQ short form questionnaire. Statistical Analyses To assess the status of students body image and eating disorders mean and standard deviation will be computed. To determine the significance of difference among obese groups and body image and eating disorders MANOVA will be performed. Subsequently, a follow-up ANOVA test will be carried out to report the significant mean difference. Depending on the data, correlation co-efficient will be used to measure the relationship between obese classes and body image and eating disorders. Association between demographic qualitative variables will be analysed by using Chi-square test. The statistical analyses will be performed using SPSS version 24.0. The significance level set at .05 levels.