Social physique anxiety and physical self-esteem: Gender and age effects

The aim of this study was to test the generalisability of the factor pattern, structural parameters, factor correlations and latent mean structure of social physique anxiety and physical self-esteem across gender, age and gender × age. The social physique anxiety scale and general physical self-esteem scale from the physical self-perception profile was administered to high school and university students aged 11–24 years (N = 2334). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test the adequacy of a two-factor correlated model in the full sample, and separately by gender, age and gender × age sub-samples. The CFA model satisfied criteria for goodness-of-fit with the data in all sub-samples, the only exception was for females aged 21 and over. Tests of invariance of the factor pattern, structural parameters and correlations across age, gender and age × gender revealed few decrements in goodness-of-fit. Latent means analysis revealed that females had consistently higher levels of social physique anxiety and lower levels of physical self-esteem than males, with the exception of the 11–12 age group. Results extend previous findings that females tend to report higher levels of social physique anxiety and lower levels of physical self-esteem than males by demonstrating that these differences are consistent across age group.