Background: Understanding the formation of body image is critical for the prevention and treatment of eating disorders, especially in adolescence, when body image develops significantly. One of the important facets of body image is body appreciation, which consists of positive feelings and attitudes towards the body regardless of its perceived "flaws". To measure body appreciation, Body Appreciation Scale-2 (Tylka and Wood-Barcalow in Body Image 12:53-67, 2015a), a unidimensional 10-item measure, has been developed and routinely used in body image research. The current study examined the validity (i.e., factor structure, gender and age invariance, associations with other constructs) of the Czech version of Body Appreciation Scale-2 for adolescents.
Methods: The study used two large samples of Czech adolescents, aged 13-18 (N1 = 613, M = 15.5, 52% girls; N2 = 1,530, M = 15.4, 50% girls). The data were collected in August 2021 (N1) and November 2020 (N2) through an online survey. For the data analysis, we used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MG-CFA), and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM).
Results: Our findings supported the proposed unidimensional factor structure and the gender (i.e., girls, boys) and age (i.e., 13-15, 16-18) scalar invariance of the Czech version of Body Appreciation Scale-2. The data also showed the expected positive correlations with body satisfaction and self-esteem, and negative correlations with media-ideal internalization, appearance schematicity, and depression. Furthermore, we discovered that body appreciation was more strongly connected to media-ideal internalization and depression for girls than boys.
Conclusions: The present study provided robust evidence that supports the validity of the Czech version of Body Appreciation Scale-2 and its usability for the assessment of body appreciation in Czech adolescents. We also proposed future directions for the research on body appreciation based on the explored gender differences.
Keywords: Adolescents; Body appreciation; Body appreciation Scale-2; Body image; Czech Republic; Validity.
Understanding the formation of body image—that is, how people view and evaluate their bodies—is crucial for the prevention and treatment of eating disorders. This is especially true in adolescence, when body image develops significantly. That being said, the psychological assessment of body image, both in research and practice, requires reliable, high-quality measurement scales. Since its development by Tylka and Wood-Barcalow (2015a), Body Appreciation Scale-2 has been routinely used to assess body appreciation, which includes positive attitudes towards one’s body despite its perceived “flaws”. Our study provides evidence for the quality of the Czech version of Body Appreciation Scale-2 for use with adolescents. We examined the scale’s characteristics on data from two robust samples (613 and 1530 Czech adolescents). Our study showed that the qualities of Czech Body Appreciation Scale-2 are satisfactory, and we recommend the scale for the assessment of body appreciation for adolescents in the Czech context. We also documented that the scale scores can be accurately compared between adolescent girls and boys, and younger (13–15) and older (16–18) adolescents. Additionally, we discovered gender differences in the relationships between body appreciation and depressive moods and the internalization of media ideals, which demands further exploration in future research.
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