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Self-concept development from childhood to adolescence was studied from a cognitive-structural perspective. The responses of subjects to the question "Who am I?" were analyzed by means of a 30-category scoring system. Between childhood and adolescence, there was a significant increase in self-conceptions categorized as follows: occupational role; existential, individuating; ideological and belief references; the sense of self-determination; the sense of unity; interpersonal style; and psychic style. A decrease occurred for self-conceptions based on territoriality, citizenship; possessions, resources; and physical self, body image. Curvilinear age changes were found for the use of the categories sex; name; kinship role; membership in an abstract category; and judgments, tastes, likes. The results for self-concept development were in general agreement with Werner's notion that cognitive development proceeds from a concrete to an abstract mode of representation.

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A controlled field study involving 1,444 adolescent males and females 13-19 years of age was performed to compare a sexuality education program based on the health belief model and social learning theory with several publicly funded community-based and school-based interventions. Among males who had never had intercourse prior to participating in the study, those in the experimental program were more likely than those in the comparison programs to maintain abstinence over the next year; there was no program effect, however, among females. Among female adolescents who initiated intercourse after the start of the study, attendees of the comparison programs were more likely to have used an effective contraceptive at most recent intercourse and to have used an effective method more consistently than were those who attended the experimental program; no such association was seen among comparable young men. Both experimental and comparison programs significantly increased the consistent use of effective methods among teenagers who had been coitally active before attending the programs. Among males, however, when preintervention contraceptive efficiency was held constant, the experimental program led to significantly greater contraceptive efficiency during the follow-up year than did the comparison programs; among females, the two approaches produced an equivalent degree of improvement. Finally, prior exposure to sexuality education was associated with greater contraceptive efficiency at the one-year follow-up among almost all sexual-experience and gender groups, regardless of the type of intervention program attended.

We report initial findings from a community-based intervention intended to strengthen unmarried teenagers' fertility control behaviors (i.e., abstinence or consistent contraceptive usage). The Health Belief Model (HBM) was used as a conceptual framework for developing curriculum materials and for evaluating a 15-hour educational program targeted at 13- to 17-year-olds of both genders. Interview data pertaining to sexual and contraceptive perceptions, knowledge, and behaviors were collected three times in a no-control, short-term, longitudinal study design: (1) just before; (2) immediately after; and (3) three to six months following the intervention. Dependent variables of major interest were changes in perceptions, knowledge, and self-reported fertility control behaviors. Based on data from the 120 teenagers who completed the followup (80% of those completing the intervention), we found: (1) consistent contraceptive usage increased significantly; (2) changes in HBM-based contraceptive perceptions and sexual knowledge at immediate post-testing were predictive of increases in contraceptive usage at longer followup; and (3) the majority (62%) remained abstinent from pre-intervention to followup. These findings, study limitations, and suggestions for a future controlled study are then discussed.