To investigate whether appearance discrimination is associated with poor self-rated health, we analyzed the 2nd-9th (2005-2012) waves of a longitudinal data of Korean Education Employment Panel (KEEP). Lifetime experience of appearance discrimination has been assessed by a question when participants were 19 years old (baseline) and became 23 years old (follow-up). The dichotomous responses for appearance discrimination at two time points were classified into four groups: (1) never (not discriminated at both baseline and follow-up), (2) chronic (discriminated at both baseline and follow-up), (3) incident (discriminated only at follow-up), and (4) error (discriminated only at baseline). Compared to 'never' group, higher odds ratio of poor self-rated health was observed among 'chronic' (OR: 3.87, 95% CI: 2.36-6.35) and 'incident' group (OR: 3.20, 95% CI: 2.26-4.55) compared to 'never' group, after adjusting for potential confounders including self-rated health and BMI at baseline.
