The Influence of School Context and Academic Performance on Adolescent Girls’ Weight and Body Image.

Adolescence is a crucial period when problems of adolescent girls? obesity emerge or become more pronounced and, independently, is a time when girls? experience excessive body image concern, rendering them vulnerable to social pressures for thinness. This paper explores the relationships among school context, academic performance, and adolescent girls? risk of obesity and body image using longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and the new high school transcript supplement to Add Health, the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement (AHAA) study. Taking advanced mathematics courses indicates academic status (as well as the social context of academic track placement) and is associated with a lower risk of obesity, even when prior risk of obesity is held constant. Additionally, girls with higher GPAs have better body images even after controlling on their weight. These results suggest that social contexts that are associated with the formal course taking structure of the school may shape students? relationships with their weight and body image. For ASA, we will continue to assess the influence school context and sub-context by exploring multi-level and cross-level effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]