Tanning Research Paper

Introduction
In recent years, there has been a lot of controversy about tanning, and tanning beds. From the moment we are born we are being warned about the harms of UV rays. When going to the beach, or to play outside parents are always lathering their children up with sunblock, and constantly reapplying. When the children grow old enough to go to the beach by themselves parents are still warning them to remember to put sunblock on and yet as one walks down the beach you see an increasing amount of people tanning. This tanning behavior is well known, you either lay flat on your back or flat on your stomach. Some people will read, listen to music, and even sleep. Most often when people engage in these types of behavior they are doing so to
Bagdasarov et al (2008) conducted a study on indoor tanning and problem behavior. Skin cancer is among the most common types of cancer in the US, and during the time of this study, the rates were rising. They wanted to discover what variables, especially psychosocial variables create a positive correlation with tanning. They gathered 898 participants but excluded those who were over 25 and those with naturally dark skin leaving 745 participants from an undergraduate northeastern university. Their study consisted of a survey in which they included psychosocial variables such as sensation seeking, self-esteem, tanning image beliefs, and friends’ tanning bed use. Bagdasarov et al (2008) wanted to be able to examine with their results what factors are strong predictors of tanning, some of their hypotheses were that adolescents tan because of the importance of appearance and the belief that tan skin is the most beautiful, and another hypothesis that media images of tanned celebrities are influencing teens to tan. They used problem behavior theory to examine these relationships; problem behavior theory is broken into 3 major systems of personality, environment, and behavior. They believed this approach would open more research because thus far there had been no research examining problem behavior theory with tanning
Those who indicated they had were then classified as tanners, Heckman et al. (2014) then jumped into factors. They requested information about smoking and drinking. To assess tanning dependence they used scales previously developed, the CAGE scale which consists of four items. This scale previously related to dependence and they modified it for the current study to fit with tanning bed use. The four items then became, cut down on tanning, feeling annoyed when told not to tan, feeling guilty when tanning too much, and wanting to tan first thing in the morning. The other measure was a modified seven item DSM-IV-TR which addressed tolerance and tanning despite negative consequences. If a participant choose two out of the four CAGE items, and/or three of the seven DSM-IV-TR criteria they meet the criteria for dependence. The next step was the 15 minute MINI was used to assess each participant’s symptoms. Such symptoms were depression, anxiety, OCD, PTSD, bulimia or anorexia nervosa and substance use disorders. Heckman et al. (2014) created scores based on the number of symptoms reported and indicated if participants met criteria for any of the above