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The development of the Ben-Tovim Walker Body Attitudes Questionnaire (BAQ), a new measure of women's attitudes towards their own bodies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

David I. Ben-Tovim  and
M. Kay Walker
David I. Ben-Tovim*
Affiliation:
Weight Disorder Unit, Department of Psychiatry, Flinders Medical Centre, Bedford Park, Australia
M. Kay Walker
Affiliation:
Weight Disorder Unit, Department of Psychiatry, Flinders Medical Centre, Bedford Park, Australia
*
1 Address for correspondence: Dr David I. Ben-Tovim, Weight Disorder Unit, Department of Psychiatry, Flinders Medical Centre, Bedford Park, SA 5042, Australia.
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Synopsis

A measure has been developed which assesses a broad range of attitudes which women hold towards their bodies. The Ben-Tovim Walker Body Attitudes Questionnaire (BAQ) is a 44-item self-report questionnaire whose subscales encompass six distinct aspects of body experience (feelings of overall fatness, self-disparagement, strength, salience of weight, feelings of attractiveness and consciousness of lower body fat). The development of the BAQ involved administering increasingly refined versions to a wide range of female respondents. The final version appears to have satisfactory psychometric properties. When the BAQ scores of 29 patients with anorexia nervosa were compared with those of a large community sample, a more complex pattern of deviant attitudes appeared than would previously have been suspected. The BAQ appears to have potential as a research instrument in this and other fields in which the measurement of attitudes towards the body is important.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , August 1991 , pp. 775 - 784
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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