Should body-image scales designed for adults be used with adolescents?

Abstract

For many people, there is a discrepancy between perceived and desired physical appearance. Attempts have been made to quantify this discrepancy as a measure of body-image disturbance: however, the use of measurement scales which are not population-specific may bias the assessment. To investigate whether ratings of body-images were affected by the scale employed, 57 male and 40 female adolescents were tested using both adult and adolescent body-figure silhouette scales. Significant between-scale differences were found, with adolescents displaying consistently lower body-image ratings when viewing adult as opposed to adolescent scales. In addition, between-sex differences in discrepancy scores and correlations between discrepancy scores and another measure of body satisfaction were significantly influenced by the scale employed. The results confirm the need for population-specific measurement scales and the implementation of standardised assessment procedures.