Effect of Psychoticism on Symptoms of Eating Disorder in Indian Female Athletes from Different Socio-Economic Background

Abstract

The present study was conducted to assess the interaction effect of psychoticism and socioeconomic status on symptoms of eating disorders in Indian female athletes. To conduct the study 1000 Indian female intercollegiate athletes were randomly selected from different sports such as gymnastics, judo, basketball, badminton, volleyball, hockey, softball and handball respectively. The average age of selected female athletes was 20.11 years. The symptoms of an eating disorder were measured by Eating Disorder Inventory prepared by Agashe and Karkare (2007). The socioeconomic status of selected female athletes was assessed by the SES inventory prepared by Agashe and Helode (2010). The personality dimension namely psychoticism was assessed through the Hindi version of the PEN inventory prepared by Menon et al. (1978). For 3x3 factorial design, subjects whose psychoticism scores fall above Q₃ were grouped in as having high psychoticism; subjects whose psychoticism scores fall below Q1 were grouped in as having a low level of psychoticism and subjects whose scores fall between Q₁ and Q₃ were treated as having a moderate level of psychoticism. The classification of subjects into high, average and low socioeconomic status was done as per the author's manual. Result reveals a significant main effect of psychoticism and socio-economic status on symptoms of eating disorder in Indian female athletes. The magnitude of symptoms of eating disorders was significantly more in high psychotic intercollegiate female athletes as compared to average and low psychotic female athletes whereas symptoms of an eating disorder were significantly more in female athletes with a high socio-economic background as compared to female athletes from the average and low socio-economic background. The two-factor interaction between personality dimension psychoticism and socio-economic status did not yield significant variance in symptoms of eating disorders in Indian female intercollegiate athletes. It was concluded that the symptoms of eating disorders in Indian female athletes can be predicted through the psychoticism personality dimension and their socio-economic status individually and not collectively.