Psychological correlates of weight control among anorexia nervosa patients and normal girls.

A study is reported that compared the responses of anorexic patients with those of two groups of non-patient adolescent girls formed by taking the most frequent and the least frequent weighers from a large sample of senior schoolgirls. Each subject completed a questionnaire which related to family conflict, self-esteem, self-presentation, behavioural control, and the criticism of eating. A MANOVA was performed, using scores for each variable and pairwise comparisons of the groups. Since the overall test was significant for comparisons between the patients and both of the non-patient groups, follow-up tests were carried out. These showed that the patients differed from the non-patients on a 'global' measure that involved all of the variables except family conflict. Self-esteem was the only single variable which produced significant differences between any of the groups, and distinguished the patients from the least frequently weighing group of non-patients.