Body Weight and Body Image: A Risk Factor Analysis in Korea

The relationship between body weight and body image, an objective and subjective measure of body shape, respectively, has long been a recurrent concern in the area of medical sociology and health-related studies. This concern stems from the argument and findings in the literature indicating that the two are not necessarily likely to be strongly correlated due mostly to the fact that one's own idea or conception about his/her body shape could be pretty different from one's actual shape. This study tries to empirically address the two issues based on the analysis of a national sample survey data in Korea: to what extent body weight and body image are correlated with or deviated from each other, on the one hand, and what factors help to account for the relationship between the two, on the other. The latest(2010) national sample data of KGSS(Korean General Social Survey) is used to evaluate the issues. Results of data analysis demonstrate that body weight and image have a moderate amount of correlation, and that the correlation tends to vary to a large extent depending on a few major socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics. Most important, the risk factor analysis attempted in this study could identify several salient risk factors, which include gender, age, chronic diseases, smoking, physical exercises, and medical checkup. To be precise, those who may be best characterized as particularly risky to weight gains are females, who are in their 20's, who have chronic diseases, non-smokers, who exercise regularly, and who conduct medical checkups on a regular basis. To extrapolate, the findings suggest that the most typically risky kinds of individuals in Korea are "young women who care very much for their health." The findings are interpreted and discussed with suggesting a recommendation for further studies.