The relationship of the attitudes towards obesity with healthy eating obsession and eating disorder tendencies: A sample of dance students

In this study, the examination of the relationship between prejudicial negative attitudes towards obesity, healthy eating obsession, and eating disorder tendencies was aimed. There are certain groups that are informed among risk groups for eating disorder psychopathologies, like university students and especially dance majors, who are seemingly contradictory risk as being related with physical activity and eating attitudes associated with the expected performance levels. Therefore, in this study, for data collection, the criterion sampling method, which is a subtype of the purposive sampling method, has been used. The participants who chose to answer the questions voluntarily, following informed consent, are 482 university students (219 ballet and 263 modern dance students). The “GAMS-27 Obesity Prejudice Scale” to measure attitudes towards obesity, the “SCOFF/REZZY Eating Disorders Scale” to screen eating disorder tendencies, and the “ORTO-11 Scale” to measure “orthorexic tendencies” of the participants have been used. It was found that the prejudicial attitudes of the participants towards obesity are predicting the 59% of the variance of eating disorders (F = 693.496, p = .000, R² = .591, Adj. R² = .590) and 15.7% of the variance of healthy eating fixation (F = 90.402, p = .000, R² = .158, Adj. R² = .157). The ballet student participants differed with higher prejudicial attitudes (t = - 2.805, p = .000) and eating disorder tendencies (t = -4.769, p = .000). The environmental requirements of dance education could be associated with the increasing risk for eating disorder psychopathologies that deserve to be the topic of future studies and preventive intervention programs too. Under the light of the related literature and the results of the presented study, it is important to highlight the importance of awareness and preventive interventions for the protection of individuals in risk groups.