Elsevier

Body Image

Volume 6, Issue 2, March 2009, Pages 113-120
Body Image

Validation of the German version of the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire (SATAQ-G)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2009.01.002Get rights and content

Abstract

The Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire (SATAQ) is widely used in the English-speaking countries as a measure of sociocultural influences on body image. Aim of this study was to provide validation data for three subscales of a boys’ and girls’ German version of the SATAQ (SATAQ-G). A sample of 819 male and 791 female Swiss adolescents completed the SATAQ-G internalization of body ideals, perceived pressure and awareness subscales. They also completed assessments of body dissatisfaction, weight and shape concerns, drive for thinness, weight and height. Factor analyses replicated the three subscales of the SATAQ for the boys’ as well as for the girls’ version. All three subscales showed good internal consistency. The internalization and pressure subscales indicated acceptable convergent validity. Awareness did not significantly predict body dissatisfaction. The SATAQ-G, particularly the subscales internalization and perceived pressure, seems to be a satisfactory measure of sociocultural influences on body image.

Introduction

The impact of sociocultural factors on body image has received substantial research attention (e.g. Cafri, Yamamiya, Brannick, & Thompson, 2005; Jones, Vigfusdottir, & Lee, 2004; McCabe & Ricciardelli, 2003; Wertheim, Paxton, Schutz, & Muir, 1997). Media presentations of male and female bodies have been shown to be particularly potent sources of sociocultural influence on both boys and girls. Studies about the development of body image problems and risk factors for body dissatisfaction have demonstrated that exposure to an idealized body ideal propagated by media in Western culture and the acceptance or internalization of this ideal contribute to the development of body dissatisfaction (e.g. Cafri et al., 2005; Durkin, Paxton, & Sorbello, 2007; Griffiths et al., 2000; Groesz, Levine, & Murnen, 2002; Humphreys and Paxton, 2004, Jones et al., 2004, McCabe and Ricciardelli, 2003, Monro and Huon, 2005, Tiggemann, 2003, Tiggemann and Slater, 2003). Results from the Swiss Multicenter Adolescent Survey on Health (SMASH-2002) (Narring et al., 2004), in which a representative sample of 7420 adolescents was assessed, indicated that nearly 50% of girls and 18% of boys were not satisfied with their body. The percentages of boys and girls who were dissatisfied with their body have increased in the last 10 years in Switzerland. This increase in body dissatisfaction in both genders has been suggested to be associated with the influence of body ideals propagated in Western media (Narring et al., 2004). Because of the clear importance of sociocultural influences on body image in Western culture, but also in the German speaking countries, having reliable and valid measures to assess different aspects of this influence has been essential to research in this field.

Heinberg, Thompson, and Stormer (1995) developed the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire (SATAQ) to assess women's recognition and acceptance of societal standards of appearance and to enable the testing of the influence of these ideals on women's body image and eating behaviour. Initially, the SATAQ consisted of two scales, awareness of the existence of the thin ideal presented in media and the internalization of this body ideal. Awareness of the body ideal has been defined as acknowledgement of societal appearance norms, whereas internalization of the thin ideal reflects the acceptance or adoption of a socially defined ideal as a personal standard (Heinberg et al., 1995; Thompson, van den Berg, Roehrig, Guarda, & Heinberg, 2004). The initial SATAQ was developed especially to assess the influence of the thin ideal on girls and women because studies showed that females reported higher dissatisfaction and distress with their body than males (e.g. Feingold and Mazzella, 1998, Garner, 1997, Muth and Cash, 1997) and that disordered eating is more prevalent in females than in males (Hay, Loukas, & Philpott, 2005; Hoek, 2006, Hoek and Hoeken, 2003, Thompson, 2004). Therefore, in recent years the main aim of body image research has been the understanding of the female body image and disordered eating.

However, it has been suggested that boys are also increasingly being influenced by media body ideals and that exposure to the muscular ideal has contributed to greater body dissatisfaction in boys (Arbour and Ginis, 2006, Labre, 2002). Consequently, the boys’ version of the SATAQ was developed to assess sociocultural influences on boys’ body image for which the thin ideal internalization construct of the original questionnaire was considered to be inappropriate (Smolak, Levine, & Thompson, 2001). The thin ideal internalization was replaced by the internalization of a muscular, non-fat body ideal (Smolak et al., 2001). However, it seems that muscularity is not the only component of the male body ideal. Boroughs and Thompson (2002) showed in their qualitative study that body depilation, (i.e. reduction or removal of body hair below the neck) seems to be a novel body image issue for men. Findings of a quantitative study (Boroughs, Cafri & Thompson, 2005) about body hair removal in men supported this by indicating that 64% of the 118 men reported to be engaged in body depilation. These findings support the hypothesis that a hairless body is a new component of the male body ideal. Advertisements released in Switzerland to promote hair removal products for men indicated that a hairless body is promoted by media. Therefore, boys may perceive pressure from media to have a hairless body.

It has been shown that internalization and awareness of a muscular ideal was related to weight control and muscle building behaviour in boys. The boys’ version of the SATAQ, with its three subscales internalization, awareness and muscular look, demonstrated adequate reliability and validity (Smolak et al., 2001).

Thompson et al. (2004) updated and extended the SATAQ for females in the SATAQ-3 by including additional media influence variables such as perceived pressure from media, information and internalization of the athletic ideal. The athletic ideal subscale was included because of a new focus in media on exercise and muscle development. Thus, the SATAQ-3 consists of four subscales: Internalization-general, internalization-athlete, pressure and information.

The SATAQ has been widely used in research about body image (e.g. Cafri et al., 2005, Durkin and Paxton, 2002; Forbes, Doroszewicz, Card, & Adams-Curtis, 2004; Jones et al., 2004) and disordered eating (Griffiths et al., 1999, Griffiths et al., 2000). It has been shown to be a reliable and valid instrument for the assessment of the influence of societal appearance ideals (Heinberg et al., 1995, Smolak et al., 2001, Thompson et al., 2004). It has good internal consistency in clinical (Calogero, Davis, & Thompson, 2004) and in non-clinical samples (Cashel, Cunningham, Landeros, Cokley, & Muhammad, 2003). Furthermore, it has adequate convergent validity. The SATAQ subscales have demonstrated strong relationships to body image or weight control techniques in girls and muscle building techniques in boys (Smolak et al., 2001, Thompson et al., 2004). Cafri et al. (2005) also showed in an extensive meta-analysis that the three SATAQ variables internalization, pressure and awareness were associated with body image in girls, although internalization and perceived pressure had a significantly stronger relationship with body image than awareness.

To our knowledge there is no German measure which allows the assessment of influences of media body ideals on body image. Furthermore, there is no boys’ version of the perceived pressure subscale. The main aim of the present study was to examine the scale properties of the three subscales of the boys’ and girls’ SATAQ-G, internalization of the media body ideal, perceived pressure from the media and awareness of the body ideal. Convergent validity was examined by analysing the relationship between the SATAQ-G variables and body mass index, body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness and weight and eating concerns. A further aim was to introduce a new boys’ version of the pressure subscale. For this study, the pressure subscale of the SATAQ-3 (Thompson et al., 2004) and the internalization and awareness subscale as validated by Smolak et al. (2001) were used. The validation of the SATAQ-G will make this measure accessible for body image and eating disorder research in German speaking countries.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 1610 adolescents, 791 girls and 819 boys aged 14–16 years (total mean age = 14.9 years, SD = .73; girls’ mean age = 14.84, SD = .71; boys’ mean age = 14.96, SD = .75). Respondents were drawn from 58 public co-educational schools in the German-speaking part of Switzerland from a wide range of socioeconomic status areas. Ethnicity was not assessed in this study.

Drive for thinness

With the German version of the Eating Disorder Inventory-2 Drive for Thinness (EDI-DT) subscale (Garner, 1991, Thiel et al., 1997),

Factor structure of SATAQ-G

For girls, the principal components factor analysis indicated that the three factors, pressure, awareness and internalization, accounted for 62.2% of the variance, with eigenvalues of 7.0, 1.8 and 1.1, respectively (Table 1). Factor 1 consisted of all items from the original pressure subscale. This subscale had good internal consistency with a Cronbach's α of .89. Factor 2 consisted of all items from the original awareness subscale. This subscale had adequate internal consistency with a

Discussion

When scales developed and validated in one country or culture are translated and used in another country or culture, the issue of the appropriateness of the scale in this new environment is of great importance. Consequently, we have examined the scale properties of the widely used SATAQ subscales, internalization of media body ideals, pressure to conform to media ideals and awareness of media ideals (Smolak et al., 2001, Thompson et al., 2004) in a sample of German speaking Swiss adolescent

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by a fellowship (PBBE1-112765) from the Swiss National Science Foundation to Christine Knauss.

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