Development and validation of the Physical Appearance State and Trait Anxiety Scale (PASTAS)

Future directions for positive body image research

“…the Physical State Anxiety Scale (Reed, Thompson, Brannick, & Sacco, 1991). It is likely that positive body image also consists of trait and state elements and it would be valuable to develop measures to differentiate between these stable and momentary components.…”

When feeling attractive matters too much to women: A process underpinning the relation between psychological need satisfaction and unhealthy weight control behaviors

“…The response scale ranges from 0 (not at all) to 4 (exceptionally so) with higher scores 25 indicating higher levels of weight-related appearance anxiety. Empirical evidence supports the 1 psychometric properties of the scale (e.g., Reed et al, 1991;Tiggemann & McGill, 2004 highly with measures of body dissatisfaction, appearance evaluation, and eating disturbance. 5…”

“…One such risk factor could be appearance anxiety. Limited evidence suggests that 23 weight-related appearance anxiety (e.g., anxiety about hips, waist or about generally 24 appearing overweight) explains unique variance in eating disturbance beyond the effect of 25 established risk factors such as body dissatisfaction (Reed et al, 1991). In examining the 1 relationship between dispositional (or trait) levels of weight-related appearance anxiety and 2 eating disturbance, Reed et al also found support for the ability of this affective construct to 3 distinguish between individuals with high versus low levels of eating disturbance.…”

“…State and Trait Anxiety Scale (PASTAS; Reed et al, 1991) are asked to respond to the question stem "In general I feel anxious, tense or nervous 22 about…", followed by the items "the extent to which I look overweight", "my thighs", "my 23 buttocks", "my hips", "my stomach (abdomen)", "my legs", "my waist" and "my muscle 24…”

Body Dissatisfaction

“…Presentations of body images on computer monitors (Dickson-Parnell, Jones, Braddy 1987) and questionnaire methods are also used, e.g. Physical Appearance State and Trait Anxiety Scale (Reed et al 1991), Body Image Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (Brown et al 1988), Body Cathexis Scale (Secord, Jourard 1953), Body Parts Satisfaction Scale (Berscheid, Walster, Bohrnstedt 1973) and others. Another way of determining the subjective component of body image is interview: the respondents state in semi-structured or structured interviews how they feel about their figure and body dimensions (Charles, Kerr 1986).…”