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Caravel Undergraduate Research Journal

Abstract

The study at hand was designed to look into the issues of eating disorder awareness and dieting attitudes. Specifically, it was hypothesized that individuals with more knowledge of eating disorders would be less likely to believe in dieting. It was additionally hypothesized that there would be a difference in amount of eating disorder knowledge seen between pre-determined age groupings. This was hypothesized due to the nature of the inception of eating disorders as a clinical diagnosis. Eating disorders did not begin to be added as a category into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual until the 80’s, suggesting that participants of older ages might have less knowledge about the disorders themselves. Additionally, mental health is now less stigmatized in younger generations, leading to the hypothesis that older individuals might not be disseminating and sharing information on mental health with each other. This study includes a sample of 103 participants; 93 being biologically female and 10 being biologically male, with various self-reported races and ethnicities. Participants answered an online questionnaire regarding demographic data, dieting beliefs, and eating disorder knowledge, which provided the main source of data for the study. Participants for this study were collected via social media, personal relations, and word of mouth. Analysis of the participants’ data revealed a significant relationship between eating disorder knowledge and dieting beliefs as hypothesized, meaning the more one knew about eating disorders, the less likely they were to be proponents of dieting. However, there failed to be any significant difference of accuracy of eating disorder knowledge throughout different age ranges.

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