The association between exposure to media and body weight concern among female students at private university in Selangor, Malaysia

These days, media has become a huge part of everyday life. Unrealistic thin body weight and body shape portrayed by media has led to body weight concern especially among females. The aim of this study is to investigate the associations between media exposure and body weight concern among female university students in Management and Science University. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 363 female students aged 17 to 26 years from the Management and Science University. A self-administered questionnaire was used to assess on socio-demographic information, media usage, body shape concern, body appreciation scale, and the sociocultural attitudes toward appearance. The highest number of media usage were among students between 17 to 20 years old, 31.7% overweight students had high body shape concern, 40.8% student had high sociocultural attitudes towards appearance and 44.6% normal weight student perceived high body appreciation scale. In the association between media usage and body weight concern, a significant association was found on body shape concern (p=0.01), body appreciation scale (p=0.001) and sociocultural attitudes toward appearance (p=0.001). In socio-demographic and body weight concern, the result also indicated a significant association between BMI (p=0.001), monthly income (p=0.013) and education (p=0.001) with body shape concern, body appreciation scale and sociocultural attitudes towards appearance. As a conclusion, 52% in the present study showed that exposure to media have association with body weight concern among female university students