In recent research body dissatisfaction has been identified as an important risk and maintenance factor in the development of eating disorders, and studies in adolescent girls have shown a relationship between body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. Sociocultural theories have highlighted the maternal influence on body dissatisfaction and weight concerns, however, contemporary research reveals contradictory results regarding a mother’s influence on the body dissatisfaction and eating concerns of her adolescent daughter. This study investigated whether a significant relationship existed between body dissatisfaction of mothers and body dissatisfaction of their adolescent daughters in a private Johannesburg high school. A convenience sample of 97 mother-daughter pairs completed a demographic questionnaire and the Body Dissatisfaction scale of the Eating Disorder Inventory-3 (EDI-3). The daughters also completed the three scales of the EDI-3 which measure disturbed eating directly in order to screen for the presence of disturbed eating attitudes and behaviours among the adolescent girls in the sample. No significant relationship was demonstrated between the body dissatisfaction of mothers and their adolescent daughters. Among both the mothers and daughters positive relationships were shown between body dissatisfaction and body mass index (BMI). Based on the results, a mother’s own body dissatisfaction does not influence her daughter’s body dissatisfaction and disturbed eating attitudes and behaviours. Based on the screening for the presence of disturbed eating attitudes and behaviours (measured by the Body Dissatisfaction, Drive for Thinness and Bulimia scales of the EDI-3), there were girls in the sample who demonstrated disordered eating attitudes and behaviours. Higher levels of disordered eating were associated with having a higher BMI. Girls with a higher BMI tended to perceive themselves as overweight and showed more disturbed eating. The findings of the study conform to the findings of other South African studies on high school girls regarding the presence of disturbed eating attitudes and behaviours. / Dissertation (MA (Counselling Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Psychology / unrestricted

Negative body image and preoccupation with weight are the norm for most women and girls in Western society, despite their potentially harmful consequences for psychological and physical wellness. While we know that many in this population experience negative feelings towards their bodies, we do not know if their beliefs about their body size are accurate and what effect a correct or incorrect assessment of one's body size has in terms of actual behavior. I examine this question among adolescent girls using data from the 2002 Health Behaviors in School-Age Children Survey. With a sample of 2,784 girls between the ages of 11 and 17, I run Poisson regression models to assess the relationship between actual and perceived body size and healthy versus unhealthy weight control behaviors, controlling for a number of indicators known to be associated with weight control, including parent and peer relationships, media exposure, and age of first menstruation. Results indicate that a discrepancy between actual and perceived body size is associated with increases in both positive and negative weight control behaviors, though the association with negative weight control behaviors is much larger. Starting puberty later is associated with a decrease in both types of these behaviors. Difficult family relationships appear to be more strongly associated with negative weight control than positive weight control. Other associations are discussed and suggestions for future research are offered.

Narrative analysis, a form of narrative inquiry, uses stories to frame and describe how people interpret and construct the meanings of their lives. Stories connect us with our past, help us to understand our present, and offer vision of possible futures. People live and create their lives through the stories they see, hear, tell, internalize, and hope for. The interpretation of narrative is not about certainties or standards, but rather about the multiplicity of perspectives and possibilities that can be constructed to make experience understandable. Critical interpretation of narrative can thus be a transformative process; a process being so crucial to the health of adolescent girls in Western culture. This study explores how four adolescent girls, and one researcher, together, interpreted and constructed the meanings of their bodies. The journey connects the researcher's struggle to find more democratic and empowering forms of inquiry, with the stories four eighth grade girls, diverse in race, social class, religion, and skin color, tell about how they experience and see their bodies in culture, in relation to others, and as them selves. All four girls are learning to create and desire an "image" of an ideal woman, and thus are beginning to objectify their bodies to be "looked at" by others. Image was a predominant interpretive frame for constructing meaning of the body for all four girls. Yet race, particularly visual racial representations, was also a predominant interpretive frame for the two African American, and one African American-Indian girls. / Ph. D.

Interparent violence (IPV) is a global family issue. Witnessing IPV confuses children and adolescents about the parental relationship. Adolescent females often perceived fathers as strong and depend on them for safety, security, and support. It is unclear how witnessing maternal perpetrated IPV (MPIPV) affects adolescent females' socialization and development, the perception they have of their fathers, and the meaning they ascribe to father abuse. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to contribute to the literature, provide an understanding of MPIPV implications for adolescent females' social development, and bring more awareness to the lived experiences of witnessing MPIPV. Social learning, feminist, and attachment theories were useful as the conceptual framework and in understanding the lived experience of adolescent girls who witness their mothers abusing their fathers. Five young adult females chosen through purposeful sampling from the southwest region of Florida responded to semi-structured open-ended questions. Interpretive phenomenology was the analytic framework to sort, code, and analyze the data. Findings revealed these females' experiences of anger and emotional stress, their concurrent juggling of coping and stress, their closeness to both parents, and their forgiveness to them despite inimical events between them. Recommendations were that human services professionals who worked with this population develop education and training programs to support both parents and adolescent females in an effort to reduce the effects of MPIPV. This training could result in a positive social change over time as negative perceptions, thoughts, and behaviors of adolescent girls change and increased awareness about the implications of MPIPV in the home occurs

BACKGROUND: Social self-concept is a foundational construct in the healthy development of early adolescent girls; however, few gender-specific social self-concept interventions exist to support adolescent girls' development. OBJECTIVES: The overarching goal of the dissertation was to enhance the design, delivery, and evaluation of the Growing Girls Program. To achieve this, three distinct yet complimentary aims were established, to: (1) identify best practices in existing social self-concept interventions, (2) evaluate the effect of the current Growing Girls Program on early adolescent girls' social self-concept, and (3) identify gender-specific messages that early adolescent girls interpret from print media. METHODS: The dissertation employs a mixed-methods design, integrating findings from a systematic review of social self-concept interventions, content analysis of parent focus groups (n=4) and interviews (n=11), quantitative analysis of participant questionnaires (n=40) and visual content analysis of adolescent created collages (n=20). RESULTS: The results by specific aim illustrated: 1) the value of interventions that are: implemented in the school setting, developmentally and culturally appropriate, informed by theory, led by well-trained and supported facilitators, and implemented for 12 weeks to 6 months in duration, 2) that the evaluation of the Growing Girls Program provided promising evidence for its future implementation; and 3) that early adolescent girls perceived media messages to promote the importance of physical beauty, sex-appeal, cosmetic use, confidence, designer brands, perfect bodies and health. CONCLUSIONS: This study contributes to the improvement of the Growing Girls Program, and thereby to the practice of promoting early adolescent girls' social self-concept. Findings illustrate the lack of interventions focused on social self-concept and the challenges of adequately conceptualizing and measuring the construct. Therefore, the enhancement of the gender-specific Growing Girls Program fills an important gap in the social self-concept development literature. RECOMMENDATIONS: The Growing Girls Program should retain current practices assumed to be associated with its success, including its developmentally appropriate, gender specific, 22-week curriculum, its school-based setting, its use of trained and well-supported program facilitators, and it fidelity tracking. To improve, the program should 1) add lessons on the subjects of physical beauty, sex appeal, and the need to appear confident, 2) reduce levels of attrition, and 3) enhance its evaluation practices by including a comparison group, utilizing alternative self-report social self-concept measures, and including a follow up post-intervention.

Thesis (PhD (Sport Science))—University of Stellenbosch, 2008. / The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two different types of movement programs on movement competence, self-esteem and resiliency in adolescent girls from a low-socio economic environment. A non-equivalentcontrol-group design was followed. A total of N=63 girls from similar socioeconomic environments between the ages of 13-14 participated in the study. The subjects were divided into three groups. The pre-tests and post-tests were administered to all groups. Four motor fitness/motor ability tests were selected to gather data about movement competence. The Self-Perception Profile for Children (Harter, 1985) was used to measure self-esteem and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (Connor & Davidson, 2003) was used to measure resiliency. Only two of the groups received intervention programs. One group received 20 sessions in an expressive dance movement program called Biodanza and the other intervention group received 20 sessions in self-defence.

<p>The aim of the study was to develop an understanding of how adolescent South African girls in institutional care perceive their female gender role, in the past, the present and future.</p><p>The research question was: How do adolescent girls living in institutional care in South Africa perceive their female gender role in the past, the present and future? A mixed design, a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, was used in order to answer the research question. The quantitative part of the study consisted of a questionnaire, and the qualitative part of the study contained seven interviews. To interpret the analyzed data a theoretical framework was used, consisting of the theory of social constructionism and gender theory. The final result of the quantitative and the quantitative parts of the study showed that the perception of the female gender role among the respondents is more stereotyped/ traditional when it comes to the area of relationships and sexuality, but more equal in the field of future occupation and the professional role. The result shows that a majority of the respondents have one view of gender roles in general, a more traditional picture of how things are supposed to be, and another, less conservative when they express their own desires of how they want their future life and household.</p>

Thesis advisor: Jane E. Regan / This dissertation considers adolescent girls and what they need from an all-girls’ Catholic school that will prepare them, not just for college and career, but for life in a world that marginalizes girls and women. More than simply trying to make a case for single-sex schooling for girls, it suggests that the single-sex school is an important site for conversations about what it means for adolescent girls to be adolescent girls. This project names the patriarchal forces that marginalize girls and calls for a pedagogical approach that is rooted in the theological affirmation that adolescent girls are created in the image of God and called to exercise a prophetic imagination. Chapter one introduces the history of all-girls’ Catholic secondary schools, a history rooted in the story of women’s religious orders and the ministries of these women religious as educators at a time when the education of girls was not valued. Today’s all-girls’ Catholic schools are informed by this history and the Catholic Church’s commitment to honoring the dignity of each student, thus grounding a commitment to a caring and liberative educational approach. Chapter two argues that contemporary adolescent girls, including those who attend these all-girls’ Catholic secondary schools, are growing up in a cultural milieu that makes them vulnerable to the effects of the conflicting and impossible expectations to which girls and women are held. Chapter three investigates the imago Dei symbol as a theological foundation for fighting this toxic cultural milieu. Taking a cue from feminist theologians who have explored embodiment and relationality as central expressions of the imago Dei, this chapter proposes that creating communities of God’s hesed (loving-kindness) and resisting injustice are two ways that the imago Dei symbol can be expressed so as to best include adolescent girls. Chapter four suggests that, in order to realize this goal of affirming the imago Dei in adolescent girls by creating communities of God’s hesed and resistance to injustice, a feminist prophetic imagination is needed. Drawing on Walter Brueggemann’s identification of the prophetic imagination as the twinned process of denouncing the oppressive forces of the dominant culture and announcing a new and more just way of being in the world, it proposes a feminist prophetic imagination that engages in a feminist critique of the cultural milieu that girls experience and the construction of communities based in hesed and resistance to injustice. Chapter five takes up the pedagogical challenges of teaching with and for a feminist prophetic imagination. The liberative pedagogy of Paulo Freire and the caring pedagogy of Nel Noddings provide the resources for educating adolescent girls to participate in communities of God’s hesed and in practices of resistance to injustice. Chapter six returns to the concrete situation of all-girls’ Catholic secondary schools and imagines how these schools can speak to a commitment to educating for a feminist prophetic imagination in their mission and reflects on how a feminist prophetic imagination can be expressed and formalized in all Catholic schools.

This study examines portrayals of adolescent girls on Music Television (MTV). A content analysis of 26 hours of MTV programming was conducted and analyzed using quantitative and qualitative methods. Analyzed programming was shown August-November 2001. Dates were chosen randomly; times were chosen randomly from the pools of hours in which adolescents usually watch television. Adolescent girls predominantly appear in the background of MTV programs. Many of them cheer for male celebrities, but only 12% speak. The content analysis reveals that a narrow beauty ideal is promoted on the channel-most girls are thin, White, and wearing revealing clothing. It is argued that MTV portrayals exacerbate girls' body dissatisfaction, sexual objectification, and confidence slide. This study is significant because the stories told on MTV are reflected in the lived world, and those stories suggest that girls should sit quietly in the background and be thin and White to be considered beautiful.

Substance abuse, once primarily visible in the U.S. adolescent male population, is an increasing concern for the adolescent girls' population. Mental health challenges, behavioral problems, and academic failure are issues adolescent girls may encounter when they engage in substance abuse. The incidence and impact of drug use on female students' academic and social development at a large suburban school district was unknown. Vygotsky's social development theory and Bandura's social learning theory provided the framework for this cross-sectional survey study that addressed the relationships between adolescent girls' drug use and their academic performance and social development. Descriptive statistics and analysis of variance were used to examine data from the Dane County Youth Assessment Survey. The sample included the study district's adolescent girls' population consisting of 9,061 students. Results indicated significant relationships between girls' adolescent drug use and social development and academic performance. Increased drug use was related to lower social development and lower academic achievement. Results were used to develop an adolescent girls' drug prevention program that addressed the effects drugs have on adolescent girls' academic and social development. Implications for positive social change include providing a prevention program to the local district that may help inform adolescent girls so they can make healthier decisions in social settings.