Meaning-centered Intervention for Young Women With Weight and Shape Concerns

NCT ID: NCT06462300

Last Updated: 2024-06-17

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 166 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2022-10-20
• Study Completion Date: 2024-02-06

Brief Summary

Female participants with weight and shape concerns will either receive a six-week meaning-centered intervention led by a trainer or be allocated to a waitlist condition. They will receive the same questionnaires at three time points: Before the intervention, immediately after, and four weeks later.

The researchers hypothesize that a meaning-centered intervention for young women with weight and shape issues will increase participants meaning in life and decrease their eating disorder symptoms immediately after the intervention and at 4-week follow-up when compared to a waitlist condition.

Detailed Description

Female first-year psychology students at the University of Groningen will be screened for weight and shape concerns. Those scoring in the clinically relevant range will be invited to participate in the study. After filling out the baseline measures online, the participants will be randomly allocated to a waitlist or an intervention condition. Participants in the intervention condition will follow a weekly 1-hour online intervention with a trainer for six weeks, including homework assignments. In this intervention, the aim is to increase meaning in life and decrease eating disorder symptoms. All study materials will be offered in English, Dutch, or German. Immediately after the intervention and four weeks later, the participants will receive the same questionnaires again as at baseline. The waitlist participants will not receive any intervention during the six-week period between baseline and post-assessment, but receive the same questionnaires in the same timeframe. Waitlist participants will also have the option to receive the intervention after the study has been finished.

Conditions

Eating Disorder Symptom

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: TREATMENT
• Blinding Strategy: NONE

Study Groups

Meaning-centered intervention condition

The group of participants receiving the meaning-centered intervention

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

A meaning-centered intervention for young women with weight and shape concerns

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

• adapted version of the manualized meaning-centered psychotherapy for cancer patients developed by van der Spek et al. (2017)
• six weekly individual online sessions, each lasting one hour
• sessions led by a certified trainer
• four sources of meaning will be explored: personal life story, dealing with life's limitations, creating one's own life, and meaningful experiences
• homework assignments designed to deepen participants' experience and reflection on meaning in their daily lives

Waitlist control condition

The group of participants not receiving an intervention

Group Type: NO_INTERVENTION

No interventions assigned to this group

Interventions

A meaning-centered intervention for young women with weight and shape concerns

• adapted version of the manualized meaning-centered psychotherapy for cancer patients developed by van der Spek et al. (2017)
• six weekly individual online sessions, each lasting one hour
• sessions led by a certified trainer
• four sources of meaning will be explored: personal life story, dealing with life's limitations, creating one's own life, and meaningful experiences
• homework assignments designed to deepen participants' experience and reflection on meaning in their daily lives

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• When screened with the Weight Concerns Scale (WCS; Killen et al., 1994) and when scores of all five items were adjusted to equal a maximum score of 20, leading to a total range between 0 and 100 (cf. Jacobi et al., 2004), participant are eligible if they answer "always" or "often" to the item "Do you ever feel fat?" or have a total score ≥ 47 on the WCS or both

Exclusion Criteria

• Current treatment for eating disorder
• not fluent in English, Dutch, or German

• Minimum Eligible Age: 16 Years
• Maximum Eligible Age: 35 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

University of Groningen

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR

Locations

University of Groningen

Groningen, , Netherlands

Countries

Netherlands

Provided Documents

Document Type: Study Protocol and Statistical Analysis Plan

View Document

Document Type: Informed Consent Form

View Document

Other Identifiers

PSY-2223-S-0010

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id