Objectives: To study the prevalence of disordered eating and its relationship with body dissatisfaction, family dysfunction, and depression among Chinese adolescent females in Hong Kong. Method: Two hundred ninety-four schoolgirls completed a demographic and weight history sheet, Eating Attitudes Test-26, Body Dissatisfaction Scale, cohesion and conflict subscales of the Family Environment Scale, and the Beck Depression Inventory. Results: 6.5% of subjects were EAT-26 high scorers. Disordered eating was positively predicted by body dissatisfaction and, to a lesser extent, family cohesion and conflict. Body dissatisfaction was in turn positively predicted by depression, which was negatively predicted by family cohesion. Discussion: Western patterns of body dissatisfaction and disordered eating attitudes are common among Chinese adolescent females. In the presence of psychosocial vulnerability factors, more weight control behavior and eating disorders may be expected to arise in Hong Kong. 0 1996 bylohn Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Notwithstanding the marked increase of eating disorders in Western countries in the last few decades, and the vast amount of useful research work that goes with it, systematic inquiry in most non-Western populations remains scanty. Based largely on anecdotal evidence in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China, eating disorders appear to be extremely rare in Chinese societies. Several reasons have been suggested for this rarity, including the cultural tolerance of fatness, the traditional role of women, their slimness, atypical clinical manifestation, and lack of culturally sensitive diagnostic criteria and research instruments (Lee, Ho, & Hsu, 1993). But surveys of general populations have questioned some of these beliefs. A study in Hong Kong, for example, showed that typically Western patterns of body dissatisfaction have overshadowed the traditional Chinese notions of female beauty based on the face and other nontruncal features, and may predispose more young females to eating disorders (