Body Esteem and Associated Factors Among Tunisian Adolescents

Abstract

Introduction-Aim: Adolescents go through morphological and psychosocial changes that greatly influence body perception and body esteem. The aim of this study was to explore and describe body esteem among Tunisian adolescents. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study involving 340 adolescents who attend Tunisian high school. We collected the age, sex, weight, and height of each participant and we used Tunisian validated version of BESAA, the Arabic version of Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale and the F-SCOFF questionnaire to assess each participant's body esteem, self-esteem and eating disorders respectively. RESULTS: We included 340 adolescents with a sex-ratio 0.7, among the 340 participants, 58.2% had a normal BMI. We found that 78.6% and 79.7% of adolescents have respectively good body esteem and high self-esteem with a similar distribution between girls and boys. Body esteem was associated with a variety of factors, including age, self-esteem, the practice of regular sports activities and BMI, however, it was not associated with the F-SCOFF questionnaire. CONCLUSIONS: The increasing preoccupation of teenagers with their body image makes it essential to study body esteem in this population to detect disorders that may stem from body dissatisfaction.