Meaning-centered Intervention for Young Women With Weight and Shape Concerns

Searching for Meaning: A Study Examining the Effect of a Meaning-centered Intervention

Female participants with weight and shape concerns will either receive a six-week meaning-centered intervention led by a trainer or be allocated to a waitlist condition. They will receive the same questionnaires at three time points: Before the intervention, immediately after, and four weeks later.

The researchers hypothesize that a meaning-centered intervention for young women with weight and shape issues will increase participants meaning in life and decrease their eating disorder symptoms immediately after the intervention and at 4-week follow-up when compared to a waitlist condition.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Eating Disorder Symptom
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: A meaning-centered intervention for young women with weight and shape concerns

Detailed Description

Female first-year psychology students at the University of Groningen will be screened for weight and shape concerns. Those scoring in the clinically relevant range will be invited to participate in the study. After filling out the baseline measures online, the participants will be randomly allocated to a waitlist or an intervention condition. Participants in the intervention condition will follow a weekly 1-hour online intervention with a trainer for six weeks, including homework assignments. In this intervention, the aim is to increase meaning in life and decrease eating disorder symptoms. All study materials will be offered in English, Dutch, or German. Immediately after the intervention and four weeks later, the participants will receive the same questionnaires again as at baseline. The waitlist participants will not receive any intervention during the six-week period between baseline and post-assessment, but receive the same questionnaires in the same timeframe. Waitlist participants will also have the option to receive the intervention after the study has been finished.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 166
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Netherlands
  • Groningen, Netherlands, 9712TS
    • University of Groningen

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Child; Adult
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• When screened with the Weight Concerns Scale (WCS; Killen et al., 1994) and when scores of all five items were adjusted to equal a maximum score of 20, leading to a total range between 0 and 100 (cf. Jacobi et al., 2004), participant are eligible if they answer "always" or "often" to the item "Do you ever feel fat?" or have a total score ≥ 47 on the WCS or both

Exclusion Criteria:

• Current treatment for eating disorder
• not fluent in English, Dutch, or German

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Treatment
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Meaning-centered intervention condition; The group of participants receiving the meaning-centered intervention	Behavioral: A meaning-centered intervention for young women with weight and shape concerns; adapted version of the manualized meaning-centered psychotherapy for cancer patients developed by van der Spek et al. (2017); six weekly individual online sessions, each lasting one hour; sessions led by a certified trainer; four sources of meaning will be explored: personal life story, dealing with life's limitations, creating one's own life, and meaningful experiences; homework assignments designed to deepen participants' experience and reflection on meaning in their daily lives
No Intervention: Waitlist control condition; The group of participants not receiving an intervention

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Meaning in life	Presence of meaning in life subscale of Meaning in Life Questionnaire (Steger et al., 2006); average of 5 items with 7-point Likert scale (minimum: 1; maximum 7); the higher the score, the higher the presence of life meaning	Baseline (week 1), post-assessment (week 7), follow-up (week 11)

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Tripartite domain of meaning in life: Comprehension	Comprehension subscale of Multidimensional Existential Meaning Measure (George & Park, 2016); average of 5 items on 7-point Likert scale (minimum: 1; maximum: 7); the higher the score, the higher the sense of Comprehension	Baseline (week 1), post-assessment (week 7), follow-up (week 11)
Tripartite domain of meaning in life: Purpose	Purpose subscale of Multidimensional Existential Meaning Measure (George & Park, 2016); average of 5 items on 7-point Likert scale (minimum: 1; maximum: 7); the higher the score, the higher the sense of Purpose	Baseline (week 1), post-assessment (week 7), follow-up (week 11)
Tripartite domain of meaning in life: Mattering	Mattering subscale of Multidimensional Existential Meaning Measure (George & Park, 2016); average of 5 items on 7-point Likert scale (minimum: 1; maximum: 7); the higher the score, the higher the sense of Mattering	Baseline (week 1), post-assessment (week 7), follow-up (week 11)
Eating disorder symptoms	Global score of Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire (Fairburn & Beglin, 2008); average score of 22 items on a 7-point Likert scale (minimum: 0; maximum: 6); the higher the score, the more severe the eating disorder symptomatology	Baseline (week 1), post-assessment (week 7), follow-up (week 11)
Internalizing symptoms	Total score of Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995); sum score of 21 items on a 4-point Likert scale (minimum: 0; maximum: 63); the higher the score, the more severe the internalizing symptomatology	Baseline (week 1), post-assessment (week 7), follow-up (week 11)
Depressive symptoms	Depression subscale of Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995); sum score of 7 items on a 4-point Likert scale (minimum: 0; maximum: 21); the higher the score, the more severe the depressive symptomatology	Baseline (week 1), post-assessment (week 7), follow-up (week 11)
Anxiety symptoms	Anxiety subscale of Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995); sum score of 7 items on a 4-point Likert scale (minimum: 0; maximum: 21); the higher the score, the more severe the anxiety symptoms	Baseline (week 1), post-assessment (week 7), follow-up (week 11)
Stress symptoms	Stress subscale of Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995); sum score of 7 items on a 4-point Likert scale (minimum: 0; maximum: 21); the higher the score, the more severe the stress symptoms	Baseline (week 1), post-assessment (week 7), follow-up (week 11)

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of Groningen

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): October 20, 2022
• Primary Completion (Actual): February 6, 2024
• Study Completion (Actual): February 6, 2024

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: June 3, 2024
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: June 12, 2024
• First Posted (Actual): June 17, 2024

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): June 17, 2024
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: June 12, 2024
• Last Verified: June 1, 2024

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Mental Disorders; Feeding and Eating Disorders
• Other Study ID Numbers: PSY-2223-S-0010

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: YES
• IPD Plan Description: All IPD that underlies the results in the finalized publication will be made available
• IPD Sharing Time Frame: Starting 6 months after publication
• IPD Sharing Access Criteria: Access will be given based on individual requests
• IPD Sharing Supporting Information Type: STUDY_PROTOCOL; ICF; ANALYTIC_CODE

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No