The Sociociultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-3: A confirmatory factor analysis

Abstract

The Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-3 measures awareness and endorsement of societal appearance standards. The instrument has been subjected to exploratory factor analyses but to date no studies have reported a priori tests of its hypothesized factor structure using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The aim of the present study was to subject the SATAQ-3 to a CFA. Results from a non-clinical convenience sample of 369 women revealed an adequate fit of the model according to conventional criteria. However, detailed residual analysis indicated a significant lack of fit which was explainable by one mis-specified item and shared method variance due to similarities in item content. It was concluded that, with the removal of the mis-specified item, the degree of misfit was tolerable and the intended four-factor solution provides a satisfactory and parsimonious representation of the data. The SATAQ is a widely used research tool, which prior to this paper had not undergone psychometric testing using confirmatory techniques. In addition to providing evidence to support Thompson et al.'s (2004) proposed structure, the analytical approach had generic implications, demonstrating how researchers can conduct a more robust assessment of model fit than using traditional fit indices.