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The development of a body comparison measure: the CoSS

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Eating and Weight Disorders - Studies on Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

This study reports on the development and validation of a brief and widely applicable measure of body comparison (the Comparison of Self-Scale—CoSS), which is a maintaining feature of eating disorders.

Methods

A sample of 412 adults completed the CoSS, an existing measure of aspects of body comparison, and eating pathology and associated states. Test–retest reliability was examined over 2 weeks.

Results

Exploratory factor analysis showed that 22 CoSS items loaded onto two factors, resulting in two scales—Appearance Comparison and Social Comparison—with strong internal consistency and test–retest reliability.

Conclusions

In clinical terms, the CoSS was superior to the existing measure of body comparison in accounting for depression and anxiety. Given that it is a relatively brief measure, the CoSS could be useful in the routine assessment of body comparison, and in formulating and treating individuals with body image concerns. However, the measure awaits full clinical validation.

Level of evidence

Level 3.

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Funding

This research has not received any external funding.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Victoria Laker & Glenn Waller

Authors
  1. Victoria Laker
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  2. Glenn Waller
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Victoria Laker.

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Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.

Ethical approval

The study was approved by the University of Sheffield Research Ethics Committee. This article does not contain any studies with animal participants. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Appendix: Comparison of Self-Scale (CoSS)

Appendix: Comparison of Self-Scale (CoSS)

Instructions

The following questions are about how you see yourself in comparison to others. How often do you have the following thoughts (tick one per item):

  

Never

Rarely

Sometimes

More often than not

Frequently

Almost always

All of the time

1

If I see someone laughing, I think their life must be better than mine

       

2

I check whether I am thinner or fatter than those around me

       

3

I judge whether my clothes are nicer or worse than those of the people around me

       

4

If I am with friends and there is a mirror about, I try to compare my body shape to theirs

       

5

Other people seem to have more friends than I do

       

6

When I see someone wearing an outfit, I consider whether I would look better or worse in the same outfit

       

7

I check whether my hair looks nicer or worse than other people’s

       

8

When I find out how much someone else weighs, I compare it to my own weight

       

9

When I see my friends, I think that they are nicer people than I am

       

10

I compare specific parts of my body to those of people around me

       

11

I think I am a weaker person than those around me

       

12

I look at old photographs of myself to see whether my body has changed over time

       

13

My friends are more optimistic than I am

       

14

When I look at photographs of famous people I compare my body shape against theirs

       

15

When I see people who are bigger than me, I feel better about myself

       

16

When I meet people, I think I am not as likable as them

       

17

I am less confident than most people around me

       

18

When I see people in the street, I think I look less toned than them

       

19

Most people smile more frequently than I do

       

20

When I meet someone new, I think they are funnier than I am

       

21

I notice that most people have a nicer body than I do

       

22

Most people present themselves more confidently than I do

       

Scoring system

To calculate the overall score for Physical Appearance Comparison, sum the answers to questions: 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 18, and 21, and divide by 12.

To calculate the overall score for Personality Comparison, sum the answers to questions: 1, 5, 9, 11, 13, 16, 17, 19, 20, and 22, and divide by 10.

To calculate the overall score of the CoSS, sum the answers to all questions, and divide by 22.

If items are omitted, then change the divisor appropriately. The higher the score, the more comparison the participant makes.

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Laker, V., Waller, G. The development of a body comparison measure: the CoSS. Eat Weight Disord 25, 879–888 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-019-00698-5

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