Comparison between Body Image and Self-Esteem Among Female Nursing Students in Three Different Arab Countries
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- Category: Vol. 79, September 2011
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Comparison between Body Image and Self-Esteem Among Female Nursing Students in Three Different Arab Countries,NABILA TAHA, ESSMAT MANSOUR, AMAL SOBHY and ENTISAR M. YOUNESS
Abstract
Current western culture promotes standards of beauty and success which focus on physical attractiveness. These standards can create feeling of inadequacy and body dissatisfaction. Traditionally, women have responded most strongly to cultural messages of bodily attractiveness, there by experiencing greater body dissatisfaction than men. Failure to achieve the ideal has been shown to lead to decreased self-esteem which compounds body dissatisfaction and body image disturbance. Therefore; this study aimed at assessing and comparing the level of body image and self-esteem among three communities based sample from Riyadh- Kindom of Saudia Arabia (KSA), Hadhramout-Yemen, and Assiut-Egypt, 300 female students were recruited, 100 female students from each country. The study was carried out in three different settings; Riyadh Female Health Science Collage-KSA, and Faculty of Nursing, Hadhramout University of Science and Technology-Yamen, Faculty of Nursing, Assiut University-Egypt. Tools for data collection included; body image scale, which developed by El-Desouki. This scale consisted of 20 statements about positive and negative sensation of body image, Rosenberg self-esteem scale, this scale consisted of 10 statements about the positive and negative sensation of self-esteem and interview Questionnaire which developed by the investigators, it includes information about student's age, residence, marital condition, economic condition, parent's educational level, number of brothers and sisters and their orders among them. Results of this study revealed that positive body image constitutes 86% in KSA, 84% from Egypt while 73% from Yemen. The majority of the students in the three countries had high self esteem (78% in KSA, 96% in Egypt and 84% in Yemen). The study also found that positive perception of body image is associated with high self esteem (85.9%, 84.8% and 69.0%) among the studied students’ in KSA, Egypt and Yemen respectively), fortunately; negative perception of body image is associated with low self esteem in (13.6%, 15.2% and 6.2%) among students’ of KSA, Egypt and Yemen respectively. In conclusion high level of self esteem positively correlated with body image. Age, parent’s education, marital status, numbers of brothers and sisters are significantly correlated to body image and self esteem. This study recommended another informative study to investigate other dimensions of body image and self esteem in multi dimensional settings and studying the healthy lifestyle choices which are also a key to improve body image.