Assessing exposure to weight stigma: development and initial validation of the Weight Stigma Exposure Inventory (WeSEI)

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Ruckwongpatr, K, Chen, I-H, Pramukti, I, Huang, P-C, Latner, JD, O’Brien, KS, Wang, X, Chen, J-S, Üztemur, S, Lin, C-C, Chang, Y-L, Chin, W-L, Griffiths, MD ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8880-6524 and Lin, C-Y, 2025. Assessing exposure to weight stigma: development and initial validation of the Weight Stigma Exposure Inventory (WeSEI). Journal of Eating Disorders, 13: 2. ISSN 2050-2974

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40337-024-01168-9

Abstract

Background: Weight stigma is pervasive, and it has a significant impact on the social, physical, and psychological health of an individual. Weight stigma is observed from several different sources. Therefore, the present study developed and validated a new instrument, the Weight Stigma Exposure Inventory (WeSEI), to assess different sources of observed weight stigma across interpersonal and non-interpersonal sources.

Methods: The participants (n = 15,991) comprised Taiwanese young adults, Chinese adolescents, and Chinese young adults who completed paper-and-pencil and online surveys between September 2023 and December 2023. All participants provided demographic information, and completed the WeSEI, Weight Self-Stigma Questionnaire (WSSQ), and Perceived Weight Stigmatization Scale (PWSS). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used to examine the factor structure of the WeSEI.

Results: EFA and CFA results confirmed a seven-factor structure (television sources, traditional media sources, social media sources, parent sources, stranger sources, significant other sources, and friends sources) across 35 items of the WeSEI. Moreover, the WeSEI was supported by measurement invariance across subgroups (i.e., subsamples, gender, and weight status). Moreover, there were positive correlations between all seven factors of the WeSEI and the WSSQ and PWSS.

Conclusion: The WeSEI appears to assess observed weight stigma from different sources, and had good reliability, validity, and invariance across various subsamples. The WeSEI may be useful in clinical practice and research for assessing exposure to weight stigma from different sources.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Journal of Eating Disorders
Creators:	Ruckwongpatr, K., Chen, I.-H., Pramukti, I., Huang, P.-C., Latner, J.D., O’Brien, K.S., Wang, X., Chen, J.-S., Üztemur, S., Lin, C.-C., Chang, Y.-L., Chin, W.-L., Griffiths, M.D. and Lin, C.-Y.
Publisher:	Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date:	6 January 2025
Volume:	13
ISSN:	2050-2974
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1186/s40337-024-01168-9 DOI 2332833 Other
Rights:	© The Author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Laura Borcherds
Date Added:	08 Jan 2025 10:02
Last Modified:	08 Jan 2025 10:02
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/52808