Annotated bibliography
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example_ab.docxExternal and Internal Motivation for Normal-Weight Female University Students to Lose Weight
Nowadays, weight-loss is an increasingly popular topic in Western countries, in the environment of the prevalence of obesity and diseases related to being overweight that threaten the health of obese people. However, more and more normal-weight women have begun to go on a diet and try to lose weight using different methods. This trend is especially obvious among female university students and adolescents, which may be considered as a result of incorrect body image and dissatisfaction with body shape. Sometimes they will use some extreme methods to lose weight so their health as well as their mental well-being may suffer. In the extreme cases, they may even develop an eating disorder, such as anorexia. Thus, my research intends to explore the possible external and internal motivation for normal-weight female university students to lose weight. By exploring the motivation factors identified by female university students who want to lose weight, I can help clinicians and physicians understand their patients better, and therefore develop more efficient therapies. The three outside sources I intend to use are scholarly articles, which give me inspiration as well as convincing evidence. The first source I have used points out some external factors that encourage children and teenage girls to go on a diet for a very thin body (Hill, 2002). The second article, in which a long-term, carefully designed experiment on obese people participating in a weight-loss program is tactfully conducted, identifies the internal and external motivation to lose weight, and each of them have a different effect on weight loss and weight loss maintenance. (Williams, Grow, Freedman, Ryan & Deci, 1996). The third article, in which researchers conducted interviews among 91 voluntary respondents, demonstrates that there are differences among different age groups with regard to the motivation to lose weight (Hankey, Leslie & Lean, 2002). Generally speaking, the three sources I have used all focus on the psychological aspect of people involved in weight loss process. However, unlike the second and third sources, the first source is a literature review, in which the author, instead of doing his/her own research, used lots of findings of other research and got to her own conclusion on how the external environmental factors affect the desire of teenage girls to lose weight. There are differences between second and third sources as well. The second source implemented 2 surveys that showed dynamic changes during a 23-month period while the survey conducted by the third source only displayed static data.
Hankey, C. R., Leslie, W. S., & Lean, M. E. J. (2002). Why lose weight? Reasons for seeking weight loss by overweight but otherwise healthy men. International Journal of Obesity and Related Disorders, 26(6), 880-882.
In the context of increasing obesity and the booming of weight-loss industry, the question of this article is what reasons motivate the overweight, but otherwise healthy, men to lose weight? The authors implemented a survey about the motivation to lose weight on 91 voluntary male workers who were obese but healthy. After the interviews, the author identified four dominant reasons that contribute to the initiation of losing weight: health benefits, improved fitness, improved well-being, and improved appearance. Among the four reasons, most of the respondents consider health benefits as the primary reason to lose weight while there are significant differences among age groups, such as heavier emphasis for younger respondents on improved appearance. Therefore the findings show that the health benefits created by weight loss seem to be widely accepted by male members in the society.
The authors mainly used interviews and anthropometric measurement as their research methods to collect data from the respondents, based on which they developed their results and conclusion. Therefore, the research is objective and convincing. I agree with the point made by the authors that different motivation factors will be shown among different age groups, which supports the significance of my study. However, there are still some gaps between our studies. First, the subjects of the experiment conducted by the authors are all male respondents, which is in contrast with the objects of my research question. I should also realize that there is gender difference with the objects between our studies which may affect the result of my area of interest, since men and women would have different requirements for their body shape. Moreover, while the objects of this experiment are from different age groups, my research question will focus on female students in university so there may be some characteristics in university age group that differ with those in different age groups, as it has been identified in this article. Last but not least, my objects are all at normal weight, which means that in no way do they need to lose weight in terms of health. Therefore when I want to figure out the motivation of losing weight, health may not turn out to be the primary reason in their minds. From this article, I learned how to set out the description of the questions in the interview and I also realized that the appearance factor should be considered as an important factor in my research. This research is similar to the article of Williams et al (1996) because they all looked into the motivation of obese people to lose weight, and both used survey as their research method. In addition, it shares the common ground with Hill (2002) that there are differences in motivation among different age groups. However, it differs with Hill (2002) in terms of subjects and research method because the article of Hill (2002) is basically just a literature review without experiment.
Hill, A. J. (2002). Developmental issues in attitudes to food and diet. The Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 61(2), 259-66.
In this information explosion society, more and more people are wondering how the eating habits come into being at an early age and what effect will external factors influence them. With this puzzle, the question of this article is to find out how the parental instruction and other external factors influence children and adolescents about the attitude to food and diet. The findings suggest that parents can modify children’s eating habits and create a healthy eating pattern and at the same time, the parents need guidance on how to control their children’s diet in case of the adverse effect. The article is mainly divided into two parts and one is about parents’ effect on children’s eating behavior while the other part is about the external, that is, environment’s effect on children’s food choice. Instead of emphasis on the benefits and importance of proper eating habits created at an early age, the author focused on the psychological reasons for children to reject or favor a certain type of food, which is very novel and makes sense to me.
This article is basically a literature review in which the author supports his/her own argument by citing other research articles. Although the author didn’t do his/her own experiment, this high-quality, peer-reviewed article provides a clear and efficient organization of ideas in which the author shares valuable thinking patterns and conclusions with audience. In this article, the author points out that the prevalence of losing weight among girls is in part motivated by the external environment factors, which includes the TV advertisement that depicts “unattainably thin” body shape (Hill, 2002), on which I agree. Also the author identifies the peers as an external motivation factor that will encourage the teenage girls to seek for thinner body, which is really important to my study. In addition, this article doesn’t focus on one specific area or region and instead, it talks about the children’s attitudes to food and diet in United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, which shows the significant amount of effort the author had put in this research. This article stands out of the three sources because it is a literature review and doesn’t include any experiment. Nevertheless similarities still exist such as the appearance factor, which has been found in the article of Hankey et al (2002), really affect the attitudes of teenagers to food and diet. There are also some concerns that hadn't been addressed in the article such as the older group of female students and more internal or external factors that motivate them to lose weight. Similar to adolescents that are discussed in the article, university female students are a special group as well that need attention and care because they are also experiencing the challenges of transition, which may also be a reason to lose weight.
Williams, G. C., Grow, V. M., Freedman, Z. R., Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (1996). Motivational predictors of weight loss and weight-loss maintenance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(1), 115-126.
Under a background of 12 million Americans being severely obese and confronting health risks caused by obesity, this article focuses on the experiment that was implemented among 128 obese participants who took part in a six-month weight-loss program and the follow-up survey after 23-month. The objective of the research is to test the hypotheses developed by the authors that the participants that were self-motivated would lose more weight during the six-month period and maintain their weight loss for over 23 months. This article mainly discuss two main factors that affected its experiment, which are “locus of control” and “locus of causality” (Williams et al, 1996, p.116). And the authors argued that the most crucial factors is whether the participants had internal or external locus of causality.
