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Biomedical subjects

M Tiggemann

Publications and source records attributed to M Tiggemann.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1997

Psychological effects of weight retained after pregnancy.

This study is a prospective investigation of the effect of weight retained after pregnancy on weight satisfaction, self-esteem and depressive affect, utilising the framework provided by expectancy-value theory. Self-report data were obtained from 115 women who were in the last month of their first pregnancy, and then again a month following the birth. On average women were heavier four weeks after having their baby than they were prior to becoming pregnant, and were less satisfied with their post-natal weight and shape. They were also slightly heavier than they had anticipated, particularly in the case of the younger women. Actual post-natal weight proved the most important predictor of psychological well-being following birth.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

A comparison of the Eating Disorder Examination and a general psychiatric schedule.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to investigate the adequacy of a general interview schedule for the purpose of assessing bulimia nervosa. METHOD: In two waves of data collection 18-24 months apart, 250 women were assessed for disordered eating. The first interview was typical of that included in many psychiatric interview schedules and was used to screen women for selection in a subsequent interview. This latter interview, using the Eating Disorder Examination, represents the 'gold standard' for the assessment of disordered eating. RESULTS: While the psychiatric interview satisfactorily assessed disturbed eating in general, it seemed less capable of accurately assessing cases of bulimia nervosa in particular, the major weakness being the overestimation of binge-eating. CONCLUSIONS: Structured psychiatric interviews are suitable for screening purposes to identify women with disordered eating, but identification of bulimia nervosa requires further assessment with a suitable instrument.

Bulimia↗
PubMed1996

Structure of disordered eating in a twin community sample.

OBJECTIVE: To describe the types of eating problems experienced by women in an Australian twin population. METHOD: Questions assessing preoccupation with weight or shape, use of various methods of weight control, difficulties with weight control, disordered eating, or binging, were administered to a group of 3,869 female twins. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to summarize and describe problematic eating behaviors. RESULTS: For those women experiencing problems with eating, five groups could be identified. These were overweight women who were dissatisfied with their weight and shape, underweight women struggling with anorexic behaviors, women who were having problems with binging, women who were using more extreme methods of weight control such as vomiting, laxatives, and starvation, and overweight women who were using slimming and fluid tablets for weight control. Confirmatory factor analysis suggested that this factor model is an acceptable fit to the data and that the factor structure generalizes well across two groups viz, the first-born and second-born twins. DISCUSSION: It was concluded that future studies aiming to develop a general description of eating problems in the community should specifically assess the purging behaviors used by women.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Role of television in adolescent women's body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness.

OBJECTIVE: Many authors have implicated the media's promotion of an unrealistically thin ideal for women as a major causal factor in the current high levels of body dissatisfaction and increasing incidence of eating disorders. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between exposure to one medium, television, and body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness. METHOD: Questionnaires were administered to 94 adolescent women who reported how much and what television they had watched in the previous week. Body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness were also assessed. RESULTS: Amount of television watched did not correlate with either body dissatisfaction or drive for thinness, but category of program did. Specifically, amount of time spent watching soaps, movies, and (negatively) sport predicted body dissatisfaction, and the watching of music videos predicted drive for thinness. DISCUSSION: The results are consistent with sociocultural explanations for body dissatisfaction and for the emergence of eating disorders in young women.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1996

Assessing the prevalence of eating disorders in an Australian twin population.

OBJECTIVE: This paper examines the prevalence of disordered eating in a female Australian twin population aged between 28 and 90 years in 1993. METHOD: In two waves of data collection, the eating behaviour of 3869 female twins was first assessed in 1988-1989 by self-report questionnaire and then in 1992-1993 with a telephone interview, using the Semi-Structured Assessment for the Genetics of Alcoholism interview. RESULTS: It was found that about 0.4% of the women have a lifetime prevalence of anorexia nervosa and 1.8% of the group have suffered from bulimia nervosa. The incidence of bulimia nervosa but not anorexia nervosa was markedly higher for those women under 45 (2.3% bulimia nervosa) than for those women 45 years or older. Furthermore, one in three women have at some stage in their life used some extreme method of weight control. CONCLUSIONS: The levels of bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa found are commensurate with those found in smaller studies in Australia and other parts of the world. The finding of widespread use of extreme weight control methods is of concern as this behaviour is a well-recognised precursor to more serious eating disorders.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

Affective reactions to employment and unemployment as a function of prior expectations and motivation.

Self-esteem and depressive affect measures were obtained from 809 employed and 137 unemployed young people and compared with at-school measures taken three years earlier. Scores were analysed in relation to at-school expectations of obtaining employment and expressed importance of getting a job. In both employed and unemployed groups, low prior expectations of getting a job led to a greater increase in self-esteem than high prior expectations. Among the unemployed, those who had rated getting a job as relatively important showed a greater increase in depressive affect than those who had rated getting a job as relatively less important.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1994

Dietary restraint as a predictor of reported weight loss and affect.

This study investigated dietary restraint as a predictor of subsequent reported weight loss. Neither chronic dieters nor nondieters reported actually losing weight over a 7-mo. period. With respect to recent weight change, restrained eaters reported both more recent weight loss and more recent weight gain than unrestrained eaters. Further, such weight changes had a much larger influence on their affect. It was concluded that chronic dieting is likely to produce temporary swings in both weight and mood but no permanent change. As such, chronic dieters might best be advised to abandon their dieting attempts.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Psychological distress, work attitudes and intended year of leaving school.

Recent studies in both Australia and the U.K. have shown high levels of psychological distress and anxiety in secondary school pupils, increasing over the final three years of school. Indeed, the levels observed in final year pupils have been just as high as those observed in unemployed young people. It has been suggested that the discrepant findings in some longitudinal studies reported during the past few years might be due to the inappropriate use of at-school baseline measures, where disproportionate numbers of pupils at different levels could have affected the conclusions. In response to this suggestion data are reported from a longitudinal study of school leavers, in which 1980 at-school measures were analysed as a function of year level and intended year of leaving. The findings gave no support to the hypothesis that stress level increased from over the last three years, and therefore the use of baseline measures was vindicated. It was concluded that a decade of sustained high youth unemployment is the reason why those about to leave school seem prone to greater stress and anxiety than was the case ten years ago.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Psychological correlates of the level of alcohol consumption in young adults.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the psychological condition of young adults who drank no alcohol, moderate, or excessive amounts of alcohol. DESIGN: Subjects from a longitudinal study of the school-to-work transition supplied information by postal questionnaire, and others matched for age were interviewed. PARTICIPANTS: A sample of adults of average age 24 years. The 483 in the longitudinal study had been students at 12 metropolitan high schools in 1980, and had been followed annually from then until 1988; the 111 who were interviewed were mature-aged university students. Sex ratios and the proportion employed were similar in the two samples. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The General Health Questionnaire was used to measure psychological disturbance in both samples, and alcohol consumption was measured by self-report in terms of number of glasses of beer, wine, spirits and fortified wine taken during the preceding week. RESULTS: Higher levels of disturbance were shown by men who drank excessively in the first study, and who abstained from alcohol in the second study. The latter result was related to the poorer health of abstainers. Women showed no psychological differences according to level of alcohol consumption. CONCLUSIONS: The inconsistent results for men in the two studies suggest that research methodology influences results in ways that are important for researchers in this field to take into account. The lack of disturbance in moderate drinkers of both samples indicates the social acceptability of responsible alcohol consumption in Australia, and supports efforts to educate the public and their medical advisors so that well-informed decisions can be made about alcohol use.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Social support and psychological well-being in young adults: the multi-dimensional support scale.

A large sample (N = 483) of community-living adults (M age = 23.6 years) responded to questions about the frequency and adequacy of emotional, practical, and informational support during the past month from three sources-confidants, peers, and supervisors-using the Multi-Dimensional Support Scale. Factor analysis was used to distinguish meaningful regularities in item responses, and the resulting five scales have high internal reliability. Scores correlated significantly with measures of self-esteem, depressive affect, and psychological disturbance according to the General Health Questionnaire. To investigate what contribution support measures could make to the prediction of psychological well-being, hierarchical regression analyses were carried out with stressors entered first and support scores entered second. As expected, respondents' psychological well-being was related to their level of life stress; however, the addition of social support measures doubled the explained variance in measures of psychological well-being. The support measure with the strongest association with well-being was the frequency of supportive behaviors toward the respondent by close family and friends.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1992

Psychological attributes of young adult smokers.

To study the psychological aspects of cigarette-smoking in community adults, we examined longitudinal data from a sample of young people (from age 15 to 23 years). Questions on smoking behavior had been asked during the last five years of the study, and information on self-esteem, depressive affect, negative mood, hopelessness, psychological disturbance, locus of control, social alienation and health was also available. Current smokers in the last year of the study had differed from nonsmokers nine years previously by having more external locus of control and now were less likely to report their health as excellent. Most smokers also drank alcohol, but cigarette consumption did not differ for drinkers and nondrinkers. Contrary to expectations, current smokers showed no distinctive psychological attributes, and those who started or stopped smoking were similarly undistinctive in psychological terms. Results suggest that efforts to stress the self-destructive or antisocial nature of tobacco use have not been accepted by the smokers in this age group (M = 23.6 yr.).

Adult↗
PubMed1991

The stability of attributional style and its relation to psychological distress.

A group of yound adults completed the Attributional Style Questionnaire and measures of depressive affect and hopelessness on two occasions separated by a time interval of three years. Attributional style was demonstrated to be relatively stable over this time period, and was correlated with the measures of psychological well-being. Specifically, those who scored highest on depressive affect and hopelessness attributed good outcomes more externally and less stably, and attributed bad outcomes to relatively more stable and global causes. In contrast to the hopelessness model of depression, however, multiple regression analyses showed that depressive attributions were not antecedent to increased psychological distress; nor were they a consequence. Furthermore, negative life-events did not contribute to the prediction. It was concluded that the data are most consonant with Brewin's (1985) symptom model, in which depressive attributions are a concomitant or symptom of depression but have no causal impact on the onset or course of the disorder.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1991

The psychological impact of unemployment and unsatisfactory employment in young men and women: longitudinal and cross-sectional data.

Data are presented from the seventh wave of a longitudinal study of school-leavers that commenced in 1980. Four groups were compared: satisfied employed, dissatisfied employed, unemployed and full-time tertiary students. The groups differed initially with respect to only one background variable, teacher-rated academic potential, and did not differ on any of the psychological measures of well-being. In general, the unemployed and dissatisfied employed groups displayed poorer psychological well-being than the satisfied employed and student groups on a range of measures. The longitudinal data suggested that this was because the two disadvantaged groups showed smaller improvements than the others, rather than any deterioration. The results also suggested that for the males unemployment was worse than unsatisfactory employment, but that for the females unsatisfactory employment was worse than unemployment.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

Length of unemployment and psychological distress: longitudinal and cross-sectional data.

Data are presented from the second stage of a longitudinal study of unemployed young people, when their ages ranged from 19 to 24 yr. Data from the first stage, when their ages ranged from 16 to 20 yr, had provided support for a curvilinear hypothesis relating psychological distress or affective well-being, to unemployment duration. According to the curvilinear hypothesis, distress peaks at around 6 months and declines thereafter. In the present study three target groups were distinguished: those unemployed for 3 months or less, those unemployed from 4 to 8 months, and those unemployed for 9 months or more. On most of the dependent measures the 3 month, and 4-8 month groups did not differ, but the 9 month group was significantly worse off than either. It is concluded that the relations between length of unemployment and psychological distress, or well-being, are different in teenagers and young adults. Possible explanations for the differences are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Psychological concomitants of tobacco and alcohol use in young Australian adults.

Nineteen-year-old subjects in an Australian community sample (N = 1028) reported their tobacco and alcohol use of the previous week, and 598 of them gave similar information 3 years later. The paper examines the demographic (sex, ethnic background, and occupational status) and psychological characteristics (hopelessness, self-esteem, locus of control, and social alienation) of tobacco and alcohol users and nonusers at the ages of 19 and 22, and also of subjects who started or stopped consumption of these drugs over the three year period. Smoking at 22, and particularly having started to smoke between 19 and 22, seems to be associated with feelings of demoralization and social alienation, as is relatively heavy drinking. Moderate drinking of alcohol is however normative for the well-adjusted and socially well-integrated young adult in this culture. The findings imply a need for rather different health-promotion messages related to tobacco and to alcohol.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1989

Suicidal ideation in a young adult population.

Depending on the manner in which the data were interpreted, as many as 17.5% of women and 20.2% of men, or as few as 3.0% of women and 3.3% of men in a young Australian adult population reported some degree of suicidal ideation in the few weeks prior to testing. Using a suicidal ideation score derived from the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), 11.7% of men and 9.7% women could be considered to have suicidal ideation. These findings and the diversity of results from other studies emphasize the need for standardized methods of assessment of suicidal ideation. The GHQ could be usefully employed for this purpose, particularly as it is widely used and further analysis of existing data could provide valuable comparisons.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1989

The General Health Questionnaire: reliability and validity for Australian youth.

General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) results are given for a large (N = 1013) sample of South Australian young people (average age 19.6 years), to compare the usefulness of the 12-, 28-, and 30-item forms of the GHQ. Internal reliabilities are generally adequate and the Likert scoring method produces significant correlations with psychological measures such as self-esteem. The case-prevalence rate using the binary scoring method was comparable with other studies, but misclassification rates were unacceptably high when DSM-III Axis I diagnosis was used as the criterion for the presence of any psychiatric disorder.

Adolescent↗