Purpose: Body image shame plays a key role in disordered eating symptoms and psychological adjustment. Nonetheless, research has been mainly focussed on women. The Body Image Shame Scale (BISS) was previously developed and tested in a nonclinical sample of women. This study examines the BISS in a sample of men comprising students and community participants.
Methods: Participants were 420 men, who completed the BISS and self-report measures of shame, self-criticism, body weight and shape concerns, and psychopathological symptoms.
Results: The previously identified structure of the BISS, with an external and internal dimension, fitted the data well. All items presented high reliability. The BISS total score and its subscales in men present high construct reliability, and convergent and discriminant validity. Correlation analyses indicated that BISS and its subscales in men present positive associations with general shame and self-criticism, body weight and shape concerns, and with indices of poorer psychological adjustment.
Conclusion: Findings supported that the BISS is a reliable measure to assess body shame in men.
Level of evidence: III: Evidence obtained from well-designed cohort or case-control analytic studies.
Keywords: Body image; Body image shame; Confirmatory factor analysis; Gender; Psychometric properties.
© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.