ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness 1998 March;38(1):66-74

Copyright © 1998 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Measurement of exercise dependence in bodybuilders

Smith D. K. ², Hale B. D. ¹, Collins D. ²

¹ Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent, UK; ² Manchester Metropolitan University, Alsager, Stoke-on-Trent, UK

Objective. The pur­pose of ­this ­study was to ­explore exer­cise depen­dence in body­build­ers, and under­take pre­lim­i­nary val­i­da­tion of a meas­ure­ment instru­ment.
Experimental ­design. A com­par­a­tive anal­y­sis of ­self-­report indi­ces ­between ­groups.
Participants. Forty-sev­en body­build­ers, 31 indi­vid­u­als who ­weight ­trained for gen­er­al fit­ness pur­pos­es and 24 weight­lift­ers par­tic­i­pat­ed in the ­study.
Measures. Each sub­ject com­plet­ed the fol­low­ing: dem­o­graph­ic infor­ma­tion, body­build­ing-spe­cif­ic ver­sions of the ­social iden­tity and exclu­siv­ity ­scales of the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale, the phys­i­cal ­strength and ­body attrac­tive­ness sub­scales of the Physical Self-Perception Profile, a ­short ­form of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, and a 9-­item Bodybuilding Dependence Scale.
Results. Factor anal­y­sis on the BDS ­revealed 3 sub­scales (­social depen­den­cy, train­ing depen­den­cy and mas­tery) ­which account­ed for 68.4% of the var­i­ance. Internal con­sis­ten­cy was sat­is­fac­to­ry for ­each sub­scale (Chronbach’s α=0.76, 0.75 and 0.78 respec­tive­ly). The BDS ­social depen­den­cy and ­PSPP ­body attrac­tive­ness ­scores of the body­build­ers ­were high­er ­than ­those of the weight­lift­ers, ­whose ­scores ­were high­er ­than ­those of the fit­ness train­ers. The body­build­ers ­scored high­er on ­both ­AIMS sub­scales ­than the oth­er ­groups. The body­build­ers and weight­lift­ers ­scored high­er on ­PSPP phys­i­cal ­strength ­than the fit­ness train­ers. BDS ­social depen­den­cy cor­re­lat­ed ­with ­both ­AIMS and ­both ­PSPP sub­scales, and BDS train­ing depen­den­cy cor­re­lat­ed ­with ­AIMS exclu­siv­ity. All ­three BDS sub­scales cor­re­lat­ed ­with train­ing fre­quen­cy. Discriminant anal­y­sis ­found the com­bi­na­tion of ­AIMS ­social iden­tity, BDS ­social depen­den­cy and ­years train­ing expe­ri­ence ena­bled cor­rect clas­sifi­ca­tion of 92% of the respon­dents.
Conclusions. These ­results sup­port the con­struct and con­cur­rent valid­ity of the BDS ­social depen­den­cy sub­scale, but do not whol­ly sup­port the valid­ity of the oth­er two sub­scales.