The Association Between Social Appearance Anxiety and Eating Attitudes Among Vocational High School Students

High school students experience many growth and developmental changes. These changes make adolescents vulnerable to body image, appearance issues. Negative body image perception can lead to psychosocial problems such as social appearance anxiety and eating disorders in adolescents. Our aim of this study is to assess the relationship between social appearance anxiety and eating attitude as a descriptive study design. Study was held in two vocational high schools in Ankara between May and June 2018 (n=685). The research data were collected by sociodemographic and diet information form, social appearance anxiety scale (SAAS) and eating attitude test (EAT-26). Researchers used independent-samples t-test, one-way analysis of variance and correlation analysis for the data analyses. 60% of the students are male, and 35.8% of students have an abnormal body mass index. The frequency of normal eating attitudes was found as 71.8% while the frequency of abnormal eating attitudes was found as 28.2% A weak positive correlation is between the SAAS and the EAT-26 scores (r =.129). Althought, a weak negative correlation was between the school year and the EAT-26 score (r =-.076). The SAAS mean score of the students, who stated that they used medicines, was significantly higher than the others. Abnormal eating attitude is related to social appearance anxiety. Eating attitudes are related to social appearance anxiety among vocational school students. Social appearance anxiety impacts abnormal eating attitudes. Psychosocial support to reduce social appearance anxiety might improve the physical and mental health of vocational high school adolescents.