The influence of eating disorder symptoms on daily coping goals, coping efficacy and coping choice

Women with disordered eating symptoms tend to report higher amounts of stress and endorse more emotion and avoidance coping choices. However, the literature has largely focused upon only one dimension of the coping process: coping choice. Further, coping behaviors have often been studied using single administration stress and coping checklists and little research has been conducted in naturalistic settings. Our study examined the relationship between eating disordered symptoms, stress and coping variables, including coping goals, coping efficacy and coping choice, using an experience sampling method. 104 undergraduate female participants completed initial measures of eating pathology and dysphoria and daily measures via website to assess stress and endorsement of coping variables. We found that women with more eating pathology experienced more daily stress, endorsed specific coping goals and used more distraction to cope. However, once we controlled for initial levels of dysphoria, many of our results were no longer significant.