Effect of Gender Composition of School on BodyConcerns in Adolescent Women

Marika Tiggemann*

School of Psychology, Flinders University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

Accepted 13 November 1999

Abstract: Objective: This study aimed to investigate the role of gender composition of schoolon body figure preferences, eating disorder symptomology, and role concerns. Method:Questionnaires were completed by 261 Australian adolescent girls in two private single-sexand two private coeducational school environments. Results: There was no difference innominated ideal figure or eating disorder scores between the schools. However, girls in thesingle-sex schools placed a greater emphasis on achievement than their counterparts at thecoeducational schools. These role concerns had a differential impact on prediction of theideal figure, whereby the importance placed on intelligence and professional success pre-dicted the choice of a thinner ideal figure for the single-sex schools, but a larger ideal for thecoeducational schools. Discussion: It was concluded that the motivation for thinness differsbetween single-sex and coeducational schools. © 2001 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Int J EatDisord 29: 239–243, 2001.

Key words: gender composition; body figure preferences; single-sex schools; coeducationalschools

INTRODUCTION

It is generally accepted that the sociocultural model offers the most plausible theoreticalexplanation for our society’s high level of body image disturbance, body dissatisfaction,and the increasing rate of eating disorders among women (Thompson & Heinberg, 1993).This model maintains that current societal standards for beauty inordinately emphasizethe desirability of thinness, and this ideal of thinness is accepted by most women. Par-ticular subcultures or environments that amplify the cultural emphasis on thinness havebeen identified (e.g., dancers and athletes). However, the one environment that is animportant source of influence for most adolescents, namely, the school, has been littlestudied.

In the general literature on eating disorders among women, Silverstein and Perdue(1988) identified two different recurring themes. It seems that body dissatisfaction, diet-

*Correspondence to: Dr. M. Tiggemann, School of Psychology, The Flinders University of South Australia,G.P.O. Box 2100, Adelaide 5001, Australia.

© 2001 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Prod. #1616

ing, and other eating problems are related not only to thin ideal standards of bodilyattractiveness as expected, but also to achievement and nontraditional sex role aspirations(Silverstein & Perdue, 1988; Silverstein, Carpman, Perlick, & Perdue, 1990). In fact, Strie-gel-Moore, Silberstein, Grunberg, and Rodin (1990) speculated that aspects of the collegeexperience such as an emphasis on achievement motivation might contribute to the de-velopment of disordered eating and demonstrated a positive relationship with competi-tiveness. In their (retrospective) study of schools, Striegel-Moore, Silberstein, and Rodin(1986) initially reported higher prevalence rates of bulimia in schools that place a greateremphasis on dating. In their follow-up, however, Striegel-Moore, Connor-Greene, andShime (1991) found no relationship between disordered eating and whether schools wereperceived as emphasizing competitiveness or traditional feminine dependent behaviors.More recently, Ogden and Thomas (1999) found that girls attending a school with highersocioeconomic status (SES) reported more weight concern than those at a school with alower SES, a difference partially mediated by values.

One particular aspect of the school environment that has generated much generaldebate on academic achievement is the sex composition of the school (Marsh, 1989).However, little research has considered the possible implications of single-sex as opposedto coeducational school environments on body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. Inthe one published study that offers a direct comparison, Dyer and Tiggemann (1996)found that girls at a private single-sex school nominated a thinner ideal figure anddisplayed more eating-disordered patterns than those at a private coeducational school.Although the schools did not differ in their reported role concerns, the importance ofprofessional success emerged as an independent predictor of a thin ideal figure only forthe single-sex school. Clearly, this result needs to be replicated with a larger sample ofschools in order to convincingly attribute it to the sex composition of the schools. Hence,the aim of the present study was to further explore the impact of single-sex and coedu-cational environments on the interrelationships among body perceptions, eating disordersymptomatology, and role concerns among Australian adolescent girls.

METHOD

Participants

The participants were 261 female students attending four Catholic schools of approxi-mately equivalent SES. Two schools were coeducational (Ns = 56, 61) and two weresingle-sex (Ns = 75, 69). All participants were in Year 11, with a mean age of 16.1 years.

Measures

After completing background information, participants were presented with the FigurePreference Scale (Fallon & Rozin, 1985). They were asked to indicate which figure ap-proximated their current figure (Current), the one they would like to look like (Ideal), andthe one they perceived to be most attractive to the opposite sex (Attractive).

The second section assessed role concerns. Following Silverstein and Perdue (1988),participants were asked to rate (1 = not at all important, 5 = extremely important) howimportant they believed the attributes of slimness, physical attractiveness, intelligence,professional success, popularity (with women and with men), being a mother, being agood home maker, and the ability to attend to the needs of others, are in order for awoman to achieve satisfaction. This was followed by the three behavioral subscales (Drive

240 Tiggemann

for Thinness, Bulimia, and Body Dissatisfaction) of the Eating Disorders Inventory (EDI;Garner, Olmsted, & Polivy, 1983). Untransformed scores were utilized, as recommendedfor nonclinical populations by Schoemaker, van Strien, and van der Staak (1994). Result-ing reliabilities were reasonable, with subscale Cronbach alphas ranging from .81 to .93.

RESULTS

School Differences in Body Perceptions and Eating Disorder Scores

Table 1 presents the mean figure ratings for the coeducational and single-sex schools, aswell as body mass index (BMI). The adolescent women in all schools rated their currentfigure as substantially larger than their ideal and attractive figures (respective ts = 4.93,6.78, 7.12, 7.05, all ps < .001). Although analyses of variance (ANOVAs) between schoolsrevealed a significant effect for BMI, F (3,204) = 3.03, p < .05, there was no correspondingdifference between participants’ perceptions of their current figure, F < 1. Nor was thereany difference between schools in ideal, F (3,251) = 1.08, p > .05, or attractive figures, F(3,243) = 2.09, p > .05. Similarly, there were no significant differences on the EDI subscalesof Drive for Thinness, F (3,252) = 1.83, p > .05, or Body Dissatisfaction, F (3,246) = 1.92, p> .05. There was a significant effect on Bulimia, F (3,255) = 4.21, p < .01, which, however,decreased to nonsignificance, F (3,203) = 2.35, p > .05, when BMI was used as a covariate.

Table 1. Means (SD in parentheses) of current, ideal, and attractive figures, body mass index(BMI), Eating Disorder Inventory subscales, dieting and role concerns by school

Coeducational Single-sex

School 1(N = 56)

School 2(N = 61)

School 3(N = 9)

School 4(N = 75)

Current 41.88(10.83)

41.97(13.52)

41.18(11.85)

42.16(12.21)

Ideal 33.64(5.93)

31.64(7.72)

32.67(6.83)

33.63(8.05)

Attractive 33.58(5.20)

30.56(6.96)

31.07(7.02)

31.58(7.11)

BMI 19.78(2.73)

21.67(3.57)

20.15(3.37)

21.12*(3.75)

Drive for Thinness 22.11(9.26)

24.72(9.09)

20.73(10.12)

22.88(10.45)

Body Dissatisfaction 38.25(12.18)

41.52(10.80)

36.34(12.24)

38.95(12.82)

Bulimia 15.94(6.97)

19.39(7.32)

16.10(6.00)

15.59*(7.00)

Percent ever dieting 21 24 22 27Percent current dieting 8 15 5 18*Attractiveness 7.42

(1.53)7.08(2.06)

7.45(1.65)

6.46(1.81)*

Achievement 7.49(1.99)

7.23(1.59)

7.87(1.56)

8.01(1.85)*

Popularity 7.39(1.97)

7.36(1.96)

7.52(1.54)

6.36(2.19)*

Homemaker 6.67(1.62)

5.96(2.13)

5.90(2.01)

6.78(2.18)*

*p < .05.

Gender Composition 241

In terms of dieting status, there was no between-schools difference on whether girls hadever dieted, x2 < 1. The difference for current dieting, however, was significant, x2(3) =11.04, p < .05. Table 1 shows that one single-sex and one coeducational school had mark-edly higher dieting than the other two schools. Nevertheless, overall, one would concludethat there was very little difference between the schools.

School Differences in Role Concerns

On the basis of a factor analysis of the nine role concerns (principal components fol-lowed by varimax rotation), four factors were identified. Correspondingly, scores werecombined to produce a slimness and attractiveness factor, an achievement factor (intel-ligence and professional success), popularity (with men and women), and a homemakerfactor (homemaker, mother, and attending to the needs of others). All of these provedsignificantly different across schools, respective Fs = 4.61, 2.70, 5.48, 3.44, all ps < .05.Planned comparisons, however, revealed that the difference in emphasis on achievementlay between the two coeducational schools on the one hand, and the two single-sexschools on the other, t (254) = 2.64, p < .01.

Relationship Among Body Figure Preferences, Eating Disorder Scores, and Role Concerns

Correlational analyses were used to explore possible differences between schools in therelationships between body shape preferences and EDI subscale scores on the one hand,and role concerns on the other hand. No significant relationships with the role concernsof popularity and homemaker were found for any school. In contrast, across the board, thegreater the emphasis on slimness, the thinner the ideal figure chosen (respective rs = -.12,-.23, -.23, -.27), and the higher the scores on Drive for Thinness (rs = .28, .41, .43, .28), BodyDissatisfaction (rs = .24, .25, .37, .23), and Bulimia (rs = .15, .23, .44, .32).

However, one relationship differentiated markedly between schools, namely, that be-tween an emphasis on achievement and choice of ideal figure. For the coeducationalschools, this was a positive relationship (rs = .09, .26); it was negative for the single-sexschools (rs = -.24, -.41). This difference is confirmed by the results of a regression analysisthat obtained a significant Gender Composition × Achievement interaction, t = 4.51, p <.001. Separate analyses for girls from coeducational and single-sex schools showed that forboth groups there was significant prediction of ideal figure by the four role concerns:coeducational, F (4,112) = 3.09, p < .05; single-sex, F (4,124) = 6.96, p < .001. For thecoeducational schools, attractiveness was the major predictor, b = -.30, t = -2.77, p < .01,followed by achievement, b = .20, t = 2.14, p < .03. For the single-sex schools, achievementwas the major predictor, b = -.37, t = -4.24, p < .001, followed by attractiveness, b = -.23,t = -2.52, p < .05. The major point to note, however, is the opposite signs for achievement.

DISCUSSION

The present study has replicated the results of previous research. It has demonstratedonce again that young women are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with their current shapeand rate their current figures as larger than their ideal and attractive figures. Here,however, the primary aim was to explore potential differences between the differentschool milieus created by coeducational and single-sex schools on body perceptions,eating disorder symptomatology, and role concerns. Although girls attending one coedu-

242 Tiggemann

cational school were significantly heavier, there were no significant differences betweenschools on any of the figure ratings, nor on the three EDI subscales (when BMI wasstatistically controlled). Overall, the single-sex school girls did not exhibit a greater pre-occupation with weight, inconsistent with the suggestion that such environments maygive rise to a greater incidence of eating disorders (Lawrence, 1987). Thus, any subsequentrelationship differences cannot be attributed to differences in weight concern.

There were, however, significant differences on role concerns. In particular, girls fromthe single-sex schools placed more emphasis on achievement (intelligence and profes-sional success) than their counterparts at the coeducational schools. More importantly, theresults of the regression analyses indicate that different role concerns seem to be involvedin the endorsement of the ideal shape. Not surprisingly, an emphasis on slimness pre-dicted a thinner ideal for both groups. However, girls in the single-sex sample alsoassociated intelligence and professional success with a thin figure, confirming the previ-ous finding of Dyer and Tiggemann (1996). In contrast, and unexpectedly, for the coedu-cational schools, an emphasis on achievement actually predicted the choice of a largerideal figure, a finding warranting further research.

In summary, the findings of this study suggest that the school environment might be animportant sociocultural factor in determining young women’s attitudes toward their bod-ies. Although it is clear that the concerns surrounding body image are complex, both girlsattending single-sex and coeducational schools want to be thinner. In the present study,there was no significant difference between them in body concern. What motivates thiswish for thinness, however, appears to differ between the school environments. In par-ticular, single-sex schools appear to provide an environment that promotes academicachievement (intelligence and professional success), but also links this achievement to athin ideal body.

REFERENCES

Dyer, G., & Tiggemann, M. (1996). The effect of school environment on body concerns in adolescent women. SexRoles, 34, 127–138.

Fallon, A.E., & Rozin, P. (1985). Sex differences in perceptions of desirable body shape. Journal of AbnormalPsychology, 94, 102–105.

Garner, D.M., Olmsted, M.P., & Polivy, J. (1983). Development and validation of a multidimensional eatingdisorder inventory for anorexia nervosa and bulimia. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 2, 15–34

Lawrence, M. (1987). Fed up and hungry: Women, depression and food. London: The Women’s Press.Marsh, H.M. (1989). Effects of attending single-sex and coeducational high schools on achievement, attitudes,

behaviors, and sex differences. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81, 70–85.Ogden, J., & Thomas, D. (1999). The role of familial values in understanding the impact of social class on weight

concern. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 25, 273–279.Schoemaker, C., van Strien, T., & van der Staak, C. (1994). Validation of the Eating Disorder Inventory in a

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Silverstein, B., Carpman, S., Perlick, D., & Perdue, L. (1990). Nontraditional sex role aspirations, gender identityconflict, and disordered eating among college women. Sex Roles, 23, 687–695.

Silverstein, B., & Perdue, L. (1988). The relationship between role concerns, preferences for slimness, andsymptoms of eating problems among college women. Sex Roles, 18, 101–106.

Striegel-Moore, R.H., Connor-Greene, P.A., & Shime, S. (1991). School milieu characteristics and disorderedeating in high school graduates. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 10, 187–192.

Striegel-Moore, R.H., Silberstein, L.R., Grunberg, N.E., & Rodin, J. (1990). Competing on all fronts: Achievementorientation and disordered eating. Sex Roles, 23, 697–702.

Striegel-Moore, R.H., Silberstein, L.R., & Rodin, J. (1986). Toward an understanding of risk factors for bulimia.American Psychologist, 41, 246–263.

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