Affiliations 

  • 1 Universiti Malaysia Sarawak
MyJurnal

Abstract

Background: Self-esteem is a person’s appraisal of his own worth, significance, attractiveness, and competence. Low self-esteem could also lead to social, health and psychological problems including eating disorders. Eating disorder is when a person uses measures such as dieting, restricting intake of food or purging to control his or her body weight. Objective: The current study explores the relationship between self-esteem and anorectic eating concerns among female university students in Malaysia. Method: 217 female university students were studied, using Rosenberg’s Self Esteem Scale (SE-10) and Eating Attitude Test (EAT-40). Results: Students with low self esteem had higher anorectic eating concerns. Race of the student had no significance in predicting eating disorder. Age plays an important role in eating disorder. Young students with low self-esteem are more vulnerable to anorectic eating concerns than older students. Conclusion: It was found that there exists an inverse but low correlation between the two variables self esteem and anorectic eating concerns.