Perceived Parenting Styles as Predictors of Body Image Dissatisfaction in Undergraduate Students

Abstract

The study investigated perceived parenting styles as predictors of body image dissatisfaction among undergraduate students. One hundred and twenty (120) undergraduate students with a mean age of 21.63 and SD of 2.40140 were selected using multi-stage (cluster, simple random: by balloting and purposive) sampling techniques as participants from Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Enugu. Lucena-Santos et al. (2017) Body Image and Action Questionnaire (BIAQ) and Baumrind's (1971) Parental care scale were used for data collection, a correlational design was adopted, while hierarchical linear regression using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 27 software was used for data analysis. findings show that parental style (authoritative at sig.=. .080 and authoritarian at sig.=. .118) at p< .05 didn’t independently predict body image dissatisfaction. While permissiveness negatively predicted body image dissatisfaction sig.= .018 at p< .05. Parental style jointly predicted body image dissatisfaction at sig.= .000 at p< .001, the dimensions are closely related to body image dissatisfaction at r= .365, and they contribute 13.3% variance to body image dissatisfaction at r2= .133 Hence, parents are advice to adopt both permissive style of parenting and less of both authoritarian and authoritative style to enable the student possesses low body image dissatisfaction