Health locus of control, self-awareness, and integrative eating styles in university students

The psychological and physical well-being of students is a cause for concern. For the majority of the student population this means substantial changes in healthy behaviours including eating habits. The current research was aimed at investigating integrative eating in 170 Australian university students.Self-awareness and health locus of control were measured in order to assess their relative impact on positive integrative eating practices. The self-report measures included Your Personal Eating Style Profile, Forms A and B of the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale, and the Situational Self-Awareness Scale. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses provided tentative support for the hypothesis that an internal locus of control is a significant predictor of integrative eating total, as opposed to beliefs in powerful others and chance, which were not found to be significant. Private self awareness was found to be a significant predictor of integrative eating total, after controlling for age,gender, social desirability and health locus of control. An unexpected finding was that awareness of surroundings was also found to be a significant predictor of positive integrative eating. No significant interaction was identified between self-reported private self-awareness and self-reported internal locus of control. Methodological implications of the current investigation and suggestions for future research are discussed.