Khor Geoklin, Cobiac Lynne, Skrzypiec Grace
Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang Selangor, Malaysia.
Malays J Nutr. 2002 Mar;8(1):75-98. Epub 2002 Mar 15.
University students may encounter personal, family, social, and financial stresses while trying to cope with their academic challenges. Such constraints could affect their eating behavior and health status which, in turn may have negative effects on their studies. In light of little information in Malaysia on this subject, this study was undertaken on a sample of 180 students pursuing different academic programs in a Malaysian university. The study objectives were to determine the students' eating behavior including body weight control and the extent of fear of being fat, their social self concept that reflects the five selves namely, the psychological self, the social self, the sexual self, the family self and the physical self. Eating behavior and social self concept were determined based on various methods previously validated in studies on young adults in Asia and Australia. This article focuses on gender comparisons for these determinants. The results showed that psychological and emotional factors have a significant bearing on the eating behavior of university students. Uninhibited eating behavior of both the males and females showed significant and negative correlations with feelings pertaining to personal worth, the physical self, and their relationships with peers and families. Gender differences were manifested for some determinants. The females showed more restrained eating behavior than the males; the females have a significantly higher score for family relationship, which appears to be a significant factor on male students' eating behavior. Future studies on a larger sample size may help to unravel the extent to which psychological factors influence eating behavior of students, and the underlying psychosocial basis for some of the gender differences reported in this study.
大学生在应对学业挑战时可能会遇到个人、家庭、社会和经济压力。这些限制可能会影响他们的饮食行为和健康状况，进而可能对他们的学业产生负面影响。鉴于马来西亚在这方面的信息较少，本研究以马来西亚一所大学中180名攻读不同学术课程的学生为样本进行。研究目的是确定学生的饮食行为，包括体重控制和对肥胖的恐惧程度，以及他们反映心理自我、社会自我、性自我、家庭自我和身体自我这五个自我的社会自我概念。饮食行为和社会自我概念是根据先前在亚洲和澳大利亚针对年轻人的研究中验证过的各种方法来确定的。本文重点关注这些决定因素的性别比较。结果表明，心理和情感因素对大学生的饮食行为有重大影响。男性和女性不受抑制的饮食行为与个人价值感、身体自我以及他们与同龄人和家人的关系呈显著负相关。在一些决定因素上存在性别差异。女性的饮食行为比男性更受抑制；女性在家庭关系方面的得分显著更高，这似乎是影响男学生饮食行为的一个重要因素。未来对更大样本量的研究可能有助于揭示心理因素在多大程度上影响学生的饮食行为，以及本研究中报告的一些性别差异背后的社会心理基础。
