Associations among Perceived Stress, Stress Coping, and Eating Behaviors

Background: Given the combined high prevalence of overweight and obesity (27%) among college students in the United States, particularly women, there is a need to study the risk factors associated with overweight and obesity in this population. Although some biological, psychological, social, and environmental factors have been investigated, limited research has examined perceived stress, coping, sweet intake, and emotional eating among racially/ethnically diverse college women. Purpose: The present cross- sectional study’s research aims were: 1) to investigate the relationship between perceived stress and sweet intake, 2) to examine the relationship between perceived stress and emotional eating; and 3) to determine if coping strategies moderated these relationships. The following hypotheses were proposed: 1) higher levels of perceived stress would be associated with greater sweet intake; 2) higher levels of perceived stress would be associated with increased emotional eating; and 3) the relationships among perceived stress, sweets intake and emotional eating would be moderated by avoidant coping. That is, a stronger relationship between perceived stress and sweet intake and emotional eating would be observed among students with a higher use of avoidant coping. Methods: The sample consisted of 572 racially/ethnically diverse (30% Hispanic, 29% Asian, and 11% African American) undergraduate college women. Participants completed an online demographic survey and measures of dietary intake, emotional eating, perceived stress, and stress coping. Results: Confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the factor structure of all latent constructs before study hypotheses were tested. Structural equation modeling indicated that perceived stress factors and avoidant coping did not significantly predict sweet intake. However, perceived stress factors such as perceived helplessness (β = .39, p = .005) and lack of stress self-efficacy (β = -.12, p = .002) were significantly associated with emotional eating. Furthermore, avoidant coping was significantly associated with emotional eating (β = .27, p < .001). Further, avoidant coping was not a significant moderator of the relationships among perceived stress, sweet intake, and emotional eating. Conclusion: Higher levels of perceived helplessness and avoidant coping were related to greater engagement in emotional eating in undergraduate women. Conversely, reporting less stress self-efficacy (i.e., more stress) was related to less engagement in emotional eating. Future research interventions should focus on reducing feelings of perceived helplessness and encouraging alternative coping styles which could lead to a reduction of emotional eating behaviors in undergraduate women.Psychological, Health, and Learning Sciences, Department o