EDUCATIONAL AUDIOTAPE APPROACHES TO SHORT-TERM WEIGHT LOSS

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between three educational audiotape treatments of obesity and short-term weight loss.;Of the 59 mildly obese females ranging in age from 18 to 27 years old who participated in the study, 11 received cognitive-behavioral treatment, 12 received behavioral-primarily treatment, 13 received-cognitive-primarily treatment, 12 received relaxation-control treatment, and 11 received no treatment. Volunteers reported once each week for five consecutive weeks to listen to a different 25-minute cassette audiotape within the context of their randomly-assigned experimental condition. The actual weight, percentage overweight, Eating Pattern Questionnaire (EPQ) score, and Idea Inventory (II) score served as the dependent measures. Posttest observations on the fifth week and follow-up observations on the 17th week were made for all the dependent measures.;It was hypothesized that the cognitive-behavioral group would do significantly better than the behavioral-primarily and cognitive-primarily groups, and that these three groups would do significantly better than the two control groups on the four dependent measures.;The data, analyzed using a one-way analysis of variance and Newman-Keuls method for unequal sample sizes in cases of significant F values, partially supported the hypotheses. As predicted, the cognitive-primarily group did significantly better than the no-treatment group on pretest-to-posttest change in actual weight and percentage over-weight. No other comparisons were significant, however.;The findings were discussed in terms of the interaction of the behavioral and cognitive approaches, the lack of external control, the novelty of the cogntive-primarily condition, and the relatively brief treatment period. Some implications for future research were suggested. These included increasing the sample size, including other modalities of potential merit, increasing the number of treatment sessions, exploring subject characteristics such as activity level of lifestyle and hypercellularity, and studying procedures that might enhance long-term efficacy such as subject ownership of the cassettes.