Objective: To identify the young adults' perception of their weight and examine the associations between young adults' weight perception and physical activities. Participants: A total of 4,882 participants' responses were derived from the Add Health, Wave III. Method: Chi-square tests were used to examine the weight perception and multinomial…

Objective: To examine longitudinal trajectories of perceived weight from adolescence to early adulthood by gender. Methods: We analyzed 9 waves (1997-2005) of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 8302) using Mplus. Results: Perceived overweight increased over time among girls and did not level off until 23 years of age. Blacks…

White and black adolescent females (n=344) participated in a survey of ideal body size beliefs using a questionnaire and 9 female and male body size drawings. Black females preferred a significantly heavier ideal female body size than whites and perceived that their parents and friends would select as ideal a significantly heavier female body size…

Examined parents' awareness of their daughters' attitudes, beliefs, and feelings about their bodies. Sixty-six adolescent daughters completed an eating disorder scale, a body figure rating scale, and made ratings of their shape and weight. Greater discrepancies between parents' estimates of daughters' body esteem and daughters' self-reported body…