The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of high school students group with binge-eating and addictive internet use problem as focused on stress, stress coping strategy, BAS/BIS, and interpersonal problem. Also, this study examined difference factors that can cause and sustain behavior addictions.
For this purpose, 541 high school students were asked to complete Eating Disorder Inventory-2, Pathological Internet Using Scale, Stress Scale, Stress Coping Style Scale, and Korea Inventory of Interpersonal Problem.
The results were as follows. First, stepwise discriminant analysis was used to find out difference factors of the dependent variables, binge-eating group and addictive internet use group. As a result, 3 variables(appearance stress, family stress, avoidance-focused coping) were variables that had significant discriminant effects on binge-eating and addictive internet use group respectively, with total 80.0% accuracy of classification. Second, stepwise discriminant analysis was used to find out characteristics of comorbidity group of the dependent variables, comorbidity group and 3 groups(binge-eating group, addictive internet use group, normal group). As a result, 3 variables(appearance stress, avoidance-focused coping, interpersonal problem of egocentrism) were variables that had significant discriminant effects on comorbidity and 3 groups respectively, with total 78.8% accuracy of classification. Third, step-wise discriminant analysis was used to find out difference factors of the dependent variables, binge-eating group, addictive internet use group, comorbidity group, and normal group. In this case, 3 possible discriminant functions were deducted with 3 variables(appearance stress, family stress, avoidance-focused coping). As a result, both function 1 and 2 were significant with 50.4% accuracy of classification, but no significant in function 3.
Implications, limitations, and suggestions for future study were discussed.