Drawing on a large, nationally representative population of adolescents, the current study has been able to confirm that there are two underlying constructs of weight control behaviors which are consistent with what previous literature has referred to as healthy and unhealthy weight control [4, 5, 9, 10, 22, 23]. The unhealthy construct in the current analyses included behaviors such as vomiting, using diet pills, smoking cigarettes, fasting and skipping meals. The current study also demonstrated that unhealthy weight control is positively associated with depression. This is consistent with previous research which has suggested that using unhealthy weight control behaviors is associated with poor outcomes in terms of their nutritional status and emotional wellbeing [3, 4, 24].
We found that skipping meals and fasting were among the most common unhealthy weight loss behaviors and had the lowest item difficulty on the unhealthy weight control continuum. This indicates that these behaviors may warrant discussion in routine clinical assessments and may be appropriate to use as screening questions for unhealthy weight control behaviors. In the current sample, skipping meals was a commonly used weight loss strategy with 15% of all students and 30% of students who have attempted weight loss in the past year reporting the behavior [2]. Skipping meals is a commonly reported weight loss strategy among American adolescents as well, with previous studies estimating that 20-30% of adolescents in the general population report this behavior [25, 26]. Furthermore, skipping meals is not an effective weight loss strategy as available research on successful weight loss suggests that regular meal consumption, particularly breakfast, is important for weight loss maintenance. [27, 28] Thus, regular screening for fasting and skipping meals specifically, may be as quick and useful marker for other risk behaviors, including more unhealthy weight control.
In the current study, among the more difficult indicators of the unhealthy weight control construct were use of diet pills, smoking for weight loss and vomiting. Some previous research has referred to these types of weight control behaviors as extreme weight control behaviors and demonstrated that young people who use these weight control behaviors are at risk for multiple poor outcomes. For example, Story et al. [24] found that young people who had vomited or used diet pills for weight loss in the past week were less likely to eat fruits and vegetables and more likely to consume high fat foods. Similarly, Neumark-Sztainer et al. [29] demonstrated that young people who had vomited or used diet pills for weight loss were more likely to engage in a number of risk-taking behaviors, such as substance use and unprotected sexual activity. More recently, Crow et al. [3] observed that young female adolescents who used diet pills, laxatives, diuretics or vomited for weight loss were significantly more likely to report suicidal attempts and suicidal ideation into young adulthood than those who did not.
It was of interest that two behaviors, counting calories and eating fewer carbohydrates, loaded positively onto both the healthy and unhealthy weight control constructs and that these were more difficult behaviors on both constructs. Thus, when young people report the use of these behaviors for weight control in clinical settings, clinicians need to discuss the range of other weight control behaviors students are engaging in to be able to determine how healthy their weight loss strategies are.
The healthy weight control construct identified in the current study is consistent with recognized weight control recommendations encouraging dietary improvements and exercise, [30] such as eating more vegetables and fewer sweets. Yet there is mixed evidence to suggest that adolescents who engage in weight control behaviors commonly described as healthy weight control achieve better health and wellbeing [7, 23–25, 27]. It is of interest, then, that we observed only a slight relationship between healthy weight control behaviors and positive emotional wellbeing. As discussed above, the bulk of the previous research has looked at the relationship between emotional wellbeing and unhealthy weight control behaviors rather than healthy weight control behaviors.
In the current study, we found evidence of differential item functioning suggesting measurement non-equivalence or item response bias across demographic groups. It is known that the prevalence of weight loss behaviors varies by age, gender and ethnicity among New Zealand young people [2], and internationally as well [31]. The varying prevalence of these behaviors by demographic groups and differential item functioning found in the current study suggests that there may be differing underlying cultural and gendered meanings of these behaviors and weight control more generally. One of the limitations of the current study is that our analysis of differential item functioning only concerns non-invariance of threshold parameters and not factor loadings across groups. While we were able to model some of the more significant direct effects to account for non-invariance of item threshold across groups, it is likely that non-invariance of factor loadings between groups also exists. However after the addition of direct effects the relationship between covariates and the healthy and unhealthy latent factors did not change substantially.
While the comparison of latent factor mean values between groups relies on the assumption of measurement invariance, our results indicated that young people who were female or of Maori or Pacific ethnicities were more likely to endorse more difficult weight control behaviors on the unhealthy weight control construct. Thus, these young people who report weight control behaviors may warrant extra clinical attention and monitoring to prevent poor outcomes associated with unhealthy weight control.
The strengths of the current study lie in its large, nationally representative sample of young people, well validated measures of both depression and positive mood, and use of analytic techniques to confirm what previous researchers have hypothesized. That said, there are a few limitations to the current study that warrant consideration in its interpretation. First, while our study is generalizable to secondary school students in New Zealand, this may not be true for young people in other parts of the world. This is particularly true for the weight control behaviors included in the current study as they may not be inclusive of the most commonly employed weight control behaviors used by young people in other regions of the world. For example, our study did not include items on diuretics or laxatives, yet these behaviors are reported by approximately 2% of young people in the US. [32] The current study is also limited in its depth of questioning around the weight control behaviors. For example, more information on frequency of weight control behaviors and the effects of the unhealthy weight control strategies would add depth to our understanding of the issue, but was not easily addressed in this large, broad health survey.