Body appreciation around the world: Measurement invariance of the Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age.

The Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) is a widely used measure of a core facet of the positive body image construct. However, extant research concerning measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across a large number of nations remains limited. Here, we utilised the Body Image in Nature (BINS) dataset - with data collected between 2020 and 2022 - to assess measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age groups. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis indicated that full scalar invariance was upheld across all nations, languages, gender identities, and age groups, suggesting that the unidimensional BAS-2 model has widespread applicability. There were large differences across nations and languages in latent body appreciation, while differences across gender identities and age groups were negligible-to-small. Additionally, greater body appreciation was significantly associated with higher life satisfaction, being single (versus being married or in a committed relationship), and greater rurality (versus urbanicity). Across a subset of nations where nation-level data were available, greater body appreciation was also significantly associated with greater cultural distance from the United States and greater relative income inequality. These findings suggest that the BAS-2 likely captures a near-universal conceptualisation of the body appreciation construct, which should facilitate further cross-cultural research.

Relationships between satisfaction with life, posttraumatic growth, coping strategies, and resilience in cancer survivors: A network analysis approach.

OBJECTIVE: Cancer survivors' satisfaction with life should be seen through the psychological factors related to a person's capabilities to face and handle the situation. This study aimed to (1) examine the relationships of satisfaction with life, posttraumatic growth, resilience and coping strategies in a global network model, (2) find the bridge indicators between satisfaction with life and the other constructs, and (3) test for the invariance of the network structures across several moderating variables. METHODS: In a heterogeneous sample of 696 cancer survivors (69% female; mean age = 53.1 ± 15.44 years; median time from being diagnosed = 4 years; breast cancer was the most frequent type of cancer) their satisfaction with life, resilience, coping strategies and posttraumatic growth was measured. In order to account for their complexity, the relationships between the constructs were explored using a network analysis approach. RESULTS: The network analysis shows that satisfaction with life is strongly connected to resilience, moderately connected to coping strategies, and has a weak connection with posttraumatic growth. In the separate networks, the relationships between the psychological constructs were examined in greater detail. Besides some exceptions observed in the degree of disability, the networks were invariant across gender, age, years since being diagnosed, cancer type and treatment type. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that interventions focused on cancer survivors' coping strategies and resilience could help increase their satisfaction with life. However, further replication of the proposed and/or modified model is needed.