Examining the Role of Body Image Instability in Young Adult Women: Conceptualization, Development, and Psychometric Evaluation of the Vacillating Body Image Scale (VBIS)

Abstract

The current study conceptualized body image instability as a maladaptive tendency to vacillate between different self-perceptions of one’s overall body image and developed a corresponding measure to assess body image instability. Results from a series of studies of young adult women demonstrated the validity, reliability, and utility of the Vacillating Body Image Scale (VBIS) as a meaningful measure of body image instability. In Study 1, we found that body image instability, as assessed by the VBIS, represents a unidimensional and reliable construct. In Study 2, we found evidence for both the convergent and discriminant validity of the VBIS in relation to other individual differences measures (i.e., self-concept schema, broad personality factors). In Study 3, the concurrent criterion validity of the VBIS was supported for young adult women in relation to a range of adjustment measures. Finally, in Study 4, we found consistent evidence for the incremental validity of the VBIS in predicting subsequent variations in eating disturbances, even after controlling for global self-esteem and self-concept instability. Overall, our findings offer promising support for our contention that body image instability, as measured by the VBIS, represents an important construct for understanding eating-related disturbances and other health outcomes in young adult women.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Chang Chin-Ho for the general support provided throughout this project.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no known conflict of interest to disclose.

Data availability statement

Data is available on request from the authors.

Author note

All three authors equally contributed to designing the present research studies, acquiring the necessary data for each of the studies, performing data interpretation for each of the studies, and preparing the final manuscript and subsequent revisions. Authorship order was determined randomly.

Notes

1 Noteworthy, in addition to self-esteem, given the crucial role of negative affective conditions involved in eating disturbances (Mitchell et al., 2014), we were curious to examine whether or not VBIS scores would add further incremental validity to the prediction of eating disturbance outcomes, even after controlling for negative affective conditions (e.g., stress, depressive symptoms, anxious symptoms). Accordingly, we conducted a series of post-hoc hierarchical regression analyses with Study 3 sample to predict concurrent scores on measures of drive for thinness, bulimic symptoms, body dissatisfaction, body appreciation, and negative body image emotions. After controlling for BMI and age in Step 1, scores on depression, anxiety, and stress scales were entered in Step 2, followed by VBIS scores in Step 3. Results of these post-hoc analyses consistently indicated that body image instability, as measured by the VBIS, accounted for significant additional unique variance, ranging from 3% in bulimic symptoms to 13% in drive for thinness.