Elaboration of a new scale to accurately evaluate

the body shape perception with sketches.

ENSIA Isabelle Boutrolle, Jean-Marc Sieffermann
ENSIA, UMR SCALE, Laboratoire de Perception Sensorielle et Sensométrie, 1 avenue des Olympiades, 91 744 Massy, France

Context
Numerous psychological studies aim at recording how women evaluate their own body shape.

The traditional method

Two tools are combined : an “Eating attitude” questionnaire and a “body shape dissatisfaction evaluation scale”, which is made of several body shape sketches.
We found in the literature 17 different scales built up with body shapes ranked and numbered according to a regular increase of the degree of fattiness of the
whole body.

The subjects indicate :

• which shape best matches their own body.
Figure 1 : example (1) • which shape best matches their ideal body.

Overall body shape rank of one’s rank of one’s

dissatisfaction index = body shape
- ideal body shape
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Limits of the method

The main drawback of theses scales is their lack of adjustability !
Indeed, a woman with large thighs and a thin chest would hardly identify herself on the scale.
It seems interesting to propose an adjustable scale with which women could build their own shape by choosing the size of each part of
their body. We thus developed a scale based on a cutout of the body.

Materials and method

Construct of the scale Evaluation of the effectiveness of our new scale

Subjects Subjects
Twenty women of the target population participated in the elaboration of the scale The panel is made up of 20 women who did not take part in the previous step.
(French women, 18-65 year old and with standard BMI) (French women, 18-65 year old and with standard BMI).
Materials
Materials This prototype scale was compared with a regular "whole body" scale (figure 2)
by the women.
Ten prototype body shape sketches were collected from a special issue of "Vie
pratique" French magazine.
In this issue, 10 typical morphologies are defined.
Î this sketches provide insights the diversity of the existing morphologies

Method
The subjects took part in a discussion about the most important parts of the body
which influence the body shape perception.
This led to the consensus that 4 different parts could be identified :
• the chest
• the waist
• hips and thighs 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
• the calves. Figure 2 : The Contour Drawing Rating Scale (2)
The 10 body shape sketches were cut-out according to this 4 parts. Method
9 The two types of evaluation were timed.
For each body part, the women were asked to rank the respective pieces from
the thinnest to the largest. Ties were allowed. 9 After the two evaluations, the subjects were asked :
"What is the most preferred scale (e.g. the most user friendly) ?"

Results

Construct of the scale Evaluation of the effectiveness of our new scale

The final multi-part scale was based on the mean ranks : For some subjects, the overall scale yielded low dissatisfaction indices whereas
the pieces have been ranked for the thinnest to the largest, labeled with numbers the dissatisfaction index associated with one body part (usually the chest) was
and compiled in a single booklet. very high.

Seventeen women said that they preferred the use of the cutout evaluation.
A dissatisfaction index is calculated for each body part in the same way that The mean time to carry out the two evaluations was very similar (≈ 4 minutes)
the regular "whole body" scales. even if the cutout scale actually requires 4 different evaluations.

Conclusion
Results show that this new body shape scale more accurately reflects the subjects' body shape perception.
Perspectives : This prototype was carried out with body shape sketches from a magazine and it was difficult to cutout correctly all the sketches.
So, the junctions between the different parts of the body were not very well adjusted. Such a scale should be done with the help of a professional designer.
References
(1) : POWERS P.D., ERICKSON M.T., 1986. Body image in women and its relationship to self-image and body satisfaction. The journal of obesity and weight regulation, 5, 37-50.
(2) : THOMPSON M.A., GRAY J., 1995. Development and validation of a new body-image assessment scale. Journal of personality assessment, 64, 258-269.