The hypothesis of the study was that female athletes are more prone to have traits associated with eating disorders as well as pathogenic weight control techniques than female non-athletes. Some examples of pathogenic weight control techniques are: laxatives, vomiting, fasting, and diet aids. Sport-by-sport comparisons were also used in order to help determine if athletes in certain sports were at higher risk than athletes in other sports.

The conclusions were, in correlation to research on college female athletes, there were only minor differences between the adolescent female athletes and non-athletes by means of eating disorder tendencies and pathogenic weight control techniques. The hypothesis was somewhat supported and rejected in that the aspects of bulimia and perfectionism was higher in athletes where as the other subscales were not significant enough to be noteworthy between the athletes and the non-athletes. Adolescence alone is a high risk period for developing eating disorders and athletes in this group may be at even greater risk.

The method which Taub and Blinde used to collect there data was through use of a questionnaire. The data was collected over a two-day period by distributing the questionnaire out to the students during physical education class. Confidentiality of answers was assured to the students that participated. The available student pool consisted of 280 females; 108 were athletes and 172 were non-athletes. Some students decided not to participate eight were athletes and forty-five were not, also fifteen non-athletes were absent from class on both days of the data collection. There were 100 athletes and 112 non-athletes in the final sample. The average age of the athletes was 16.2, and 15.9 of the non-athletes. The majority of the two groups were Caucasian; sixty-eight percent of the athletes and seventy-six percent of the non-athletes. Of the samples fifteen percent were freshmen, thirty-six percent were sophomores, twent

Some topics in this essay:
Taub Blinde, Carbondale Illinois, , Vol27 Issue, athletes non-athletes, female athletes, pathogenic weight, pathogenic weight control, eating disorders, weight control, control techniques, weight control techniques, diet aids, Elaine Blinde, school female athletes, significant differences, study conducted, athletes sports, associated eating disorders, traits associated eating,