[Investigation of relationship between body image satisfaction and academic field of study of female students of Islamic Azad University branch of Najafabad]

ABSTRACT

Body image is conception of someone from self schema including physical appearance, emotional reactions and situational relating body which is shaped from present and past perceptions. When a person hasn't a positive body image and considers his appearance lower than ideal society criteria, one might encounter with inconvenient feelings and outlook towards oneself like decrement in self esteem, low self confidence and even educational subsidence. Since body image can have an effective role in educational progress, therefore, in this research we have tried to investigate the relationship between body image satisfaction and academic field of study of female students. In this descriptive-correlative research 360 female students of Islamic Azad University branch of Najafabad were selected by simple sampling from various fields and were investigated by BSQ34 questionnaire. Data was analyzed by S.P.S.S software version 17 and descriptive analysis, Kruskal Wallis, Mann-Whitney U and Spearman correlation tests were used. Findings of this research showed that 34.4% of the university students had moderate-poor body image and there was a meaning relation between economic status and satisfaction from body image. Among different fields, students of physical training had the least attention to their appearance and art students had the most. Since most of the university students in this research were not satisfied with their appearance and as, paying attention to ones outward appearance can affect different aspect of life, including educational status and also regarding that universities are among the places having vital role in process of forming and improving youth problems therefore it seems that necessary teachings and training should be included in universities syllabus to improve the satisfaction of university students from their body image