Heterosociability and weight concerns in early adolescent females

The relations between heterosociability and weight concerns in early adolescent females are investigated using a sample of sixth-grade girls from a Bay Area middle school. Heterosociability is defined to include both behavior and ideas concerning cross-sex interactions. Part one of the research examines the relation between various cross-sex interactions and weight concerns after controlling for Body Mass Index (BMI) and pubertal status. Results from a self-report questionnaire indicate that both sexual interactions and perceived acceptance from male peers contribute unique variance to weight concerns in a population of sixth-grade girls (N = 157). In addition, perceived acceptance from male peers was a stronger predictor of weight concerns than perceived acceptance from female peers. Platonic cross-sex interactions were not significantly related to weight concerns.;Part two of this study examines the relation between heterosocial perspectives and weight concerns using data from interviews conducted with a subsample (N = 26) of the girls described above. Qualitative data support the idea that girls who express more passive roles in their dating scripts, by describing romantic or gender-stereo-typed heterosocial perspectives, are more likely to discuss their bodies in negative terms than girls who give themselves a more active role in their dating scripts (a characteristic of platonic heterosocial perspectives).;The purposes of part three were to combine the qualitative and quantitative data in predicting weight concerns in individual girls and to explore the strengths and weaknesses of each methodology. Results indicate that sexual involvement as well as heterosocial perspectives predict weight concerns in early adolescent females. Since heterosocial perspectives and sexual involvement do not appear to be strongly related to each other, the importance of looking at both measures in order to better predict weight concern level is supported. For example, the gendered perspective was especially successful at identifying girls, with reported high weight concerns that were mis-classified quantitatively according to their low levels of sexual behaviors. However, both measures of heterosociability failed to correctly classify the weight concern levels of some girls, signifying the limitations of each measure.