The Body Project: A Narrative and Social Network Analysis

Abstract

This dissertation explored the impact of a body acceptance intervention program, The Body Project (Stice, Shaw, Burton, & Wade, 2006) and sought to describe the processes of such impact and to describe hypothesized indirect intervention effects on the friends of participants using a sample of college females. Intervention participant interview and survey data were utilized to attempt to replicate findings from past trials of the Body Project and to apply mixed methods to summarize participants' experiences prior to, during, and after the intervention. Intervention participants' peers provided data to describe potential impact of the intervention on peers of participants. Beneficial intervention effects found in previous evaluations were replicated in the current study with the intervention reducing expressed fat talk concerns, dieting/restrained eating, and