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CHAPTER 5: Survey Research 159FIGURE 5.4Survey research such as that of Heatherton, Keel, and their colleagues (1997; 2007) investigateshow individuals are affected by eating disorders as they grow older.the fact that the same individuals were surveyed in each phase of the study.Although longitudinal designs involve a massive effort, the potential powerof such an effort is that researchers can examine changes within individualsover time.The researchers observed that eating attitudes and behaviors changed overtime. In the decade after college, women’s eating-disorder symptoms, chronicdieting, and body dissatisfaction decreased (Heatherton et al., 1997). However,despite these decreases, women’s dissatisfaction with their body and their desireto lose weight remained high. Men, in contrast, rarely had problems witheating and weight during college. Ten years later, however, they had experiencedweight gain (an average of almost 12 pounds, compared to women’saverage gain of 4 pounds). Men also reported increased dieting and symptomsof disordered eating in the 10 years after college, although this was still lowrelative to women.Heatherton et al. (1997) made some interesting observations that are relevantto our understanding of longitudinal surveys. They proposed that decreasesin women’s eating problems reflect their maturation during their 20s, changesin their roles, and being away from the college campus (and the pressures tobe thin that occur on college campuses). It’s possible, however, that other processesmay account for changes within the individuals in the sample. Usinga successive independent samples design in which separate samples of collegestudents were surveyed in 1982 and 1992, Heatherton, Nichols, Mahamedi,and Keel (1995) noted that eating-disorder symptoms and body dissatisfactionalso were lower for the college students in the 1992 sample relative to the 1982