Purpose
Adolescenthood is a period that individuals undergo various changes in physical, psychological, and social development. Adolesences will be more conscious of their physical changes, and thus will pay more attention to their appearance, figure and body shape. Especially with the development of information media, advertising platforms and online communities have continuously disseminated appearance-focused messages, such as maintaining a slim figure in recent years. Under the influence of today’s social and cultural values pursuing a beautiful body image such as self-appearance, weight and figure etc., it also makes many teenagers young students care about body image too much, and leading them to eating disorders, thus affecting their physical and mental health, and even the body image will also reduce students’ happiness. Besides, many empirical survey data of body image show that when teenagers are dissatisfied with their body appearance, they are more likely to have a low level of psychological happiness. In particular, teenage females are more concerned about appearance and weight issues than males. The more teenage girls identify with body image such as their appearance, body and figure etc, the happier they feel psychologically. On the contrary, when girls are dissatisfied with their appearance or have a negative body image, they are more likely to have negative emotions and therefore feel unhappy. It can even lead to physical illness and failure to establish good health behaviors. However, most current domestic and foreign studies on physical and mental disabilities in junior high school students focus on academic achievement, learning participation, school adaptation, social adaptation, parent satisfaction, self-care, and self-decision-making ability. But there is still a lack of empirical research on gender differences in body image and happiness among students with disabilities at this stage. In addition, a review of past literature found that these empirical results were all through Cross-sectional design. Therefore, the study uses three long-term tracking data of body image and happiness, using interaction delay analysis to understand the causal relationship between body image and happiness, and further uses latent growth model analysis to explore the growth trends of body image and happiness. Thence, in order to understand the relationship between body image and happiness of middle school students with disabilities in Taiwan more deeply, as well as the gender differences in these variables, five research purposes are proposed: (a) the development of body image among middle school students with disabilities; (b) the development of happiness among middle school students with disabilities; (c) the development of body image and happiness over time among middle school students with disabilities; (d) the causal relationship between body image and happiness among middle school students with disabilities; (e) are there gender differences in body image and happiness among middle school students with disabilities across different grades?
Research methods
This study adopted a longitudinal study, and the panel study samples were collected from 652 students from seventh grade to tenth grade of the 97th, 99th, and 100th school years at three different time points in Special Needs Education Longitudinal Study (SNELS), the researcher conducted repeated measurement data on body image and happiness of middle school students with disabilities at three different time points, and conducted cross-lagged analysis to understand the causal relationship between body image and happiness, and further used the latent growth model to explore the growth trend of body image and happiness.
Research results
The results of this study were as follows: (a) The growth trajectory of body image and happiness of middle school students with disabilities showed a non-linear slowdown; (b) From the cross-lagged model, the body image and happiness of middle school students with disabilities had an interactive influence mechanism and causal direction; (c) There was a significant and moderately positive correlation between body image and happiness, and the development of body image was significantly related to that of happiness; and (d) There was no significant difference in the initial state and growth rate of body image and happiness between male and female middle school students with disabilities.
Discussions and suggestions
The main points discussed in this study are as follows: (a) Middle school students with disabilities have a high evaluation of their body image during the first year of junior high school. Their body image will slowly decline over time in the future. (b) There are differences in body image among students with disabilities, so the growth rate of body image will generally increase over time. (c) Middle school students with disabilities have a sense of happiness during the first year of junior high school, but the students’ happiness does not show significant growth over time. (d) When middle school students with disabilities have a better body image, they can improve their happiness; when middle school students with disabilities have a poor body image, they cannot increase their happiness. (e) The better the growth rate of body image, the higher the growth rate of happiness. (f) There is no significant difference in the initial performance of body image or happiness between male and female middle school students with disabilities; there is also no long term effect on body image or happiness between male and female middle school students with disabilities. Gender differences are not represented. At the end of the article, the author puts forward the following suggestions: (a) Since the stages of junior high school and senior high school are during the period of physical and mental changes among adolescents, the body image and happiness of middle school students with disabilities will also change over time and space, and there are individual differences in the developmental trajectories. Therefore, whether parents or relevant school educators should realize that every student’s perception of body image and happiness is a dynamic process, so students should be helped to understand the true meaning of body image and be able to learn to have correct aesthetic values. (b) Longitudinal analysis of body image and happiness is limited to the items in the existing database. It cannot provide an in-depth understanding of the longer-term developmental changes of body image and happiness. Follow-up researches can collect more data on repeated measure over a longer period of time, so that the developmental trend of the impact of gender differences on body image and happiness can be more clearly observed.
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