Dear diary…
Who am I? Why am I here?
Community is a very important value to me. People feeling comfortable enough to reach out to a network of mutual support in their time of need is how we build stronger bonds and resist hardships that we would not individually be able to handle.
In my eyes, school is the first taste of community that children have - it sets the standard that they move forward with throughout the rest of their lives. However, this often means that, in the pursuit of acceptance, they end up taking on harmful ideas about what a “good body” looks like. They take on negative attitudes surrounding food and begin to treat people in higher weight bodies as an “other”.
“While I was applying for this PhD project, I was working as a supply teaching assistant in a primary school. There I noticed the ways, both subtle and unsubtle, in which disordered eating and poor body image present themselves in young people and just how early on in their lives these problems begin. ”
Too big to deal with
I knew what the signs were in theory, as I had studied them during my degrees at the University of Lincoln, but from the position of teaching staff it felt like a problem that was too “big” to deal with. Even if we made a child feel better in the moment, or took steps to make their time in school easier, it did nothing to address the underlying issue. I felt like we didn’t have the tools to make any lasting positive change happen.
These experiences highlighted that young people’s unhealthy relationships with food and exercise will only continue to get worse unless people at all levels of society do something about it. I wanted to be part of that change, which is why I wanted to work on this hugely valuable research project. It will ensure that the research we do holds up to scrutiny and uplifts vulnerable groups so they can advocate for themselves.
What does the project look like?
The PhD project is funded by UK Research and Innovation and run by the University of Lincoln in collaboration with the Body Happy Org. I am the primary researcher and I am being supervised by Dr Kamila Irvine (below, centre) and Professor David Dawson.
This photo was taken at a Body Happy research planning day at the University of Lincoln in November
It starts with a systematic review of previous research on school-based body image interventions. This will identify the approaches that work well and inform the methods we have chosen for our current research.
We can then evaluate the Body Happy Schools Programme in two vital ways. We will measure:
the direct impact of the programme on the children in the schools where it is delivered. This will allow us to pick out which of its components are the most effective in a well-informed fashion, thanks to the recommendations from the systematic review.
the programme’s acceptability - how easy it is for the programme to be accommodated into the schools’ normal functioning and how agreeable its content is, according to both the teachers who run it and the children who engage with it.
These two lines of questioning together will help us inform future work with the Body Happy Org by identifying what has positive impacts in the “here and now” and what would benefit from adjustment or replacement.
Looking to the future
Finally, we will lay the groundwork to make future research easier by examining one of the questionnaires we ask children to complete. We will test whether a shorter version still produces reliable and useful results for research, while putting less of a burden on participants, especially in very busy settings like schools.
“This project represents the next step in uniting the past, present and future of body image research to make real change in young people’s lives. Through building supportive communities in and around their schools, we can give children the skills they need to be resilient and kind advocates for themselves and other people. ”
This introduction is the first in a series of PhD diaries written by myself to raise awareness of the project and document my journey as a PhD student across its course. I am happy to respond to anyone who wishes to contact me with questions or for any other reason.