Bulimic Syndromes: Secular and Longitudinal Trends, 2001-2002

In 1992, a professor named Todd Heatherton distributed a similar survey to Harvard/Radcliffe freshman and seniors to determine how eating disordered behaviors among college students had changed over time across cohorts (secular trends). Additionally, he re-contacted the alumni who had participated in the study as undergraduates and gave them a similar questionnaire; the purpose of doing this was to evaluate how these behaviors had changed over time within the sample (longitudinal trends).

Ten years later, the study was initiated again, and this is the first time that anyone will have such data collected over a twenty-year period. In the spring of 2002, surveys were mailed to Harvard freshmen and seniors, and alumni were re-contacted from both the 1982 and 1992 cohorts. An additional element was added to the design of the study: clinical interviews were conducted with a subset of participants who completed surveys in order to establish the accuracy of information collected on surveys and correlates of disordered eating patterns.