School Engagement in Children: Investigating the Impact of Body Image Issues

Abstract

Body image concerns emerge during childhood and may have implications for children's academic functioning. School engagement represents an especially important developmental process associated with children's academic adjustment and longer-term educational outcomes. Despite the potential relevance of these constructs to one another, relatively little is known about how body image and school engagement influence one another during late childhood, or whether these associations differ across children. The current dissertation's overarching objective was to advance understanding of how body image issues and school engagement co-develop during late childhood.

Using longitudinal data from a sample of Canadian children aged 9-12 years, Study 1 examined whether body dissatisfaction and weight perception were associated with changes in affective, behavioural, and cognitive school engagement over a 7-month period. In a sample of 1,070 children (M_age = 11.13 years; 55.0% female), integrated longitudinal path models revealed that body dissatisfaction predicted decreases in cognitive engagement, whereas weight perception did not predict changes in any dimension of school engagement. Conversely, lower behavioural and cognitive engagement predicted heavier weight perceptions, suggesting that associations between body image and school engagement may be reciprocal. Follow-up analyses indicated that these longitudinal associations differed by gender: body dissatisfaction predicted lower cognitive engagement among girls, whereas lower behavioural engagement predicted greater body dissatisfaction among boys.

Building upon these findings, Study 2 sought to examine whether children could be sorted into distinct profiles of body image difficulties and whether these profiles differed in their levels of school engagement. Using latent profile analysis, 948 children (M_age = 11.04 years) were sorted into profiles based on body image (i.e., body dissatisfaction, compulsive self-monitoring, body comparisons, and weight perception) assessed at the beginning of the school year. Analyses identified three profiles characterized primarily by severity of body image difficulties: Low (65.9%), Moderate (21.4%), and High (12.7%) body image issues. The profiles differed in body dissatisfaction, compulsive self-monitoring, and body comparisons, whereas weight perception did not distinguish between profiles. Children in the Low profile demonstrated consistently greater affective, behavioural, and cognitive school engagement than children in the Moderate and/or High profiles at both time points, with minimal differences between the Moderate and High profiles, suggesting that even moderate elevations in body image difficulties may be associated with poorer school engagement.

Collectively, findings from the current dissertation suggest that body image and school engagement are interconnected during late childhood. They also emphasize the value of combining variable-centered and person-centered approaches to better understand these associations. Whereas variable-centered analyses identified specific longitudinal pathways that differed by gender, person-centered analyses revealed broader patterns of body image difficulties that were associated with poorer engagement across multiple domains and included both boys and girls. In all, these findings suggest that body image represents an important yet underrecognized correlate of children's school functioning. This highlights the potential value of identifying and addressing body image difficulties early in a child's development.