Psychological risk indicators of disordered eating in athletes

Objectives This project examined risk factors of disordered eating in athletes by adapting and applying a theoretical model. It tested a previously proposed theoretical model and explored the utility of a newly formed model within an athletic population across gender, age, and sport type to explain disordered eating. Design The design was cross-sectional and the first phase in a series of longitudinal studies. Methods 1,017 athletes completed online questionnaires related to social pressures, internalisation, body dissatisfaction, negative affect, restriction, and bulimia. Structural equation modelling was employed to analyse the fit of the measurement and structural models and to do invariance testing. Results The original theoretical model failed to achieve acceptable goodness of fit (chi(2) [70, 1017] = 1043.07; p