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Eating behaviours and attitudes following prolonged exposure to television among ethnic Fijian adolescent girls

  • Anne E. Becker (a1), Rebecca A. Burwell (a1), David B. Herzog (a1), Paul Hamburg (a2) and Stephen E. Gilman (a3)...

Abstract

Background

There are no published studies evaluating the impact of introduction of television on disordered eating in media-naïve populations.

Aims

To assess the impact of novel, prolonged exposure to television on disordered eating attitudes and behaviours among ethnic Fijian adolescent girls.

Method

A prospective, multi-wave cross-sectional design was used to compare two samples of Fijian schoolgirls before and after prolonged regional television exposure with a modified 26-item eating attitudes test, supplemented with a semi-structured interview to confirm self-reported symptoms. Narrative data from a subset of respondents from the exposed sample were analysed for content relating television exposure to body image concerns.

Results

Key indicators of disordered eating were significantly more prevalent following exposure. Narrative data revealed subjects' interest in weight loss as a means of modelling themselves after television characters.

Conclusions

This naturalistic experiment suggests a negative impact of television upon disordered eating attitudes and behaviours in a media-naïve population.

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Copyright

COPYRIGHT: © 2002 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

Corresponding author

Dr Anne E. Becker, Massachusetts General Hospital, 15 Parkman Street, WAC 81 Boston, MA 02114. USA

Footnotes

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†

See editorial, pp. 480–482, this issue.

Declaration of interest

This study was supported by funding from the Harvard Medical School.

Footnotes

References

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  • Cited by 254

  • Access

Eating behaviours and attitudes following prolonged exposure to television among ethnic Fijian adolescent girls

  • Anne E. Becker (a1), Rebecca A. Burwell (a1), David B. Herzog (a1), Paul Hamburg (a2) and Stephen E. Gilman (a3)...

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