Being in transition period between adolescent and adulthood, college students are still
affected by physical, psychological, and socio-emotional changes. The physical changes during
adolescence give rise to great concern about body shape and size until they enter adulthood, so
they tend to feel dissatisfied and try some efforts to change their body shape and size. The
dissatisfaction toward one's body or specific body parts is called body dissatisfaction,whereas
efforts to change one's body shape or size refers to body change behavior The aim of this studywas
to investigate the correlation between body dissatisfaction and body change behavior among
Indonesian and Chinese college students. Subjects are both female and male college students from
University of Surabaya (N=50) and Zhejiang University of Technology (N=50), aged 17-25 years.
This is a quantitative study and data are collected using questionnaires. The results showed that:
(I) there was a significant correlation behveen body dissatisfaction and body change behavior (to
lose weight) among Indonesian college students (r= .407, sig.= .003 (< .01)), whereas there was
no significant correlation among Chinese (r= ,158, sig.=.272 (> .05)); (2) there was no significant
correlation between body dissatisfaction and body change behavior (to increase muscle bulk)
either among Indonesian (r=,086, sig.=.552 (>.05)) or Chinese college students (r= ,054, sig.=707 (>.05)). The results will be discussed later
