Examining the mediatory role of coping strategies in the relationship between body dissatisfaction and malfunctional eating behaviors in adolescents

This study was designed to investigate the relationship between body dissatisfaction and maladaptive eating behaviors in adolescents and coping styles as a regulator. The study was conducted using the relational screening method, one of the quantitative research methods. The universe of the study consisted of young people in Istanbul. 406 young people between the ages of 15-17 from Istanbul participated in the study. The data of the study were collected using the "Personal Information Form", "Body Value Scale", "Dutch Eating Behavior Scale" and "Coping Scale for Adolescents" developed by the researcher. Data were analyzed using the IBM SPSS 27 program. Differences in mean scale scores among sociodemographic variables were evaluated using the Independent Samples t-test and ANOVA. In cases where the ANOVA assumptions were not met, the KruskalWallis H test was used as an alternative. Pearson Correlation was applied to examine the relationship between body dissatisfaction, maladaptive eating behaviors and coping strategies. To analyze the coping mediator variable, the "Bootstrap" method was used via Process Macro 4.2, thus randomly creating subsamples from the data to test the mediation model among different subgroups and facilitating comparisons with larger samples. In the study, it was determined that body dissatisfaction increased maladaptive eating behaviors and that this effect was indirectly mediated by coping strategies. It was also determined that young people with low body dissatisfaction used avoidant and negative coping strategies more frequently. The findings obtained in the study were evaluated within the framework of the literature. Suggestions were presented for future research. Keywords: Adolescence, Body Dissatisfaction, Maladaptive Eating Behaviors, Coping Strategies