USE OF BODY-ACCEPTANCE COPING BEHAVIORS BY WORKERS IN LARGER BODIES: APPLICATION OF THE CAREER SELF-MANAGEMENT MODEL

Abstract

While weight stigma has been well-documented within the vocational literature, the impact of weight stigma on fat workers’ vocational experiences and occupational well-being has been largely understudied. This study adapted and tested Social Cognitive Career Theory’s Career Self-Management (CSM) model to aid in the understanding of fat workers’ coping behaviors and workplace outcomes. Sets of items representing body acceptance coping behaviors and coping self-efficacy in the work domain were constructed and subjected to exploratory factor analysis in a sample of adult workers in larger bodies (N = 250). Two interrelated factors were found for both the body acceptance coping behaviors and coping self-efficacy measures: a self-acceptance/cognitive/emotional factor and a behavioral self-assertion factor. A confirmatory factor analysis completed with another subsample (N = 377) found a bifactor model to best fit the data. In this model, both the coping behavior and coping efficacy variables were interpreted as largely unidimensional in structure. A latent variable structural path analysis (N = 377) found that the CSM model provided good fit to the data and accounted for substantial amounts of the variance in several outcome variables, including work engagement, career satisfaction, satisfaction with coping efforts, and organizational commitment. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.