becker's study

• Aim: to discover the impact of western attitudes on the eating behaviours and related attitudes of Fijian teenage girls.
• o   IV was the exposure to western television – one group of teenage girls were questioned just when television was introduced to Fiji in 1995
• o   DV were eating behaviour, measured by a questionnaire called the EAT-26 and general attitudes to eating and body image, measured by semi-structures interview.
• o   EAT-26 questionnaire gathered quantitative data and the interviews gathered qualitative data.
• o   Initial sample = 63 ethnic Fijian girls with a mean age of 17.

  o   Second sample = 65 ethnic Fijian girls of the same age.

  o   All participants were still in school.
• o   Participants interviewed and completed the EAT-26 questionnaires individually in their own homes.

  o   Translator present in each case to prevent any difficulty in communicating across the cultural divide.

  o   Participants weight and height were also measured.
• o   1998 group was asked additional questions:

  o   Have you ever tried to change your diet to change your weight?

  o   Do parents or family ever say you should eat more?

  o   How important is it to you that you like your weight?
• o   Girls who scored over the threshold score for dysfunctional eating based on the EAT-26 were given further interviews – these were recorded and transcribed.
• Findings: none of the girls reported to purging to control their weight in 1995 but 11.3% reported to doing it in 1998 and 83% felt that tv was influential on body weight. 30% of the girls considered the characters on western tv as their role models and the girls felt pressured to imitate the slim physique of the actors.
• One strength = high reliability used standardised procedures were carefully documented. The EAT-26 tests had the same questions for every participant and can be used in every culture = reliable. This study can also be replicated with many different cultures, genders, and age groups to the effect they have on eating behaviours. The reliability of the findings are good = the differences between the 2 group not due to the scale being unreliable, but reflecting real changes over time.
• strength - However, used self-report, introduces response bias and demand characteristics therefore the study may not be as reliable.
• One weakness is that the study involved an unrepresentative sample therefore findings may not generalise. There is a problem of generalising findings from Fiji to other populations. This is because Fiji traditionally has quite distinctive attitudes to body type – for example, high BMIs are traditionally considered attractive. The clash between Fijian cultural norms and those portrayed on American tv were much greater than is the case in most countries. Therefore, the results might have been affected by culture and may tell us little about the effect of tv on body image in other countries.