Investigation of Stressful Experiences, Self-Evaluations, and Self-Standards as Predictors of Sexual Activity During Early Adolescence

Abstract

Stressful experiences, self-evaluations, and self-standards associated with multiple contexts of development (i.e., school, family, sports/athletics) were investigated as predictors of initiation of sexual activity during the transition to adolescence. A sample of 134 seventh and eighth graders was followed as part of a 4-wave, 2-year longitudinal study. Survival analysis was used to examine measures at Time 1 as predictors of the timing of initiation of sexual activity. Reports of greater stressful experiences and less favorable self-evaluations associated with school as well as weaker self-standards associated with family were significant predictors of less time to initiation of sexual activity. For sports/athletics, however, reports of more positive self-evaluations predicted less time to initiation. Results of mediational analyses indicated that self-evaluations for the school context partially mediated the linkage that stressful experiences relating to this context exhibited with initiation of sexual activity.

Neighborhood context, psychological outlook, and risk behaviors among urban African American youth.

“…They listed experiences with urban hassles at similar levels to those reported from previous research with urban African American youth (DuBois, 2002; Grant et al, 2000; Waller, 2004). …”

Sex-specific pathways to early puberty, sexual debut, and sexual risk taking: Tests of an integrated evolutionary–developmental model.

“…There is some evidence to suggest that the global measures of self-esteem used in prior research mask more precise relationships that exist between particular domains of self-esteem and adolescent sexual behavior (e.g., Waller & Dubois, 2004). The current study made use of three domains that have been shown to be important for adolescent attraction and romantic relationships.…”

Ten years of longitudinal research on U.S. adolescent sexual behavior: Developmental correlates of sexual intercourse, and the importance of age, gender and ethnic background

“…Sample sizes ranged from 34 (Romo, Lefkowitz, Sigman, & Au, 2002) to 7965 (Longmore et al, 2004), resulting in a total of over 30,000 participants. Fourteen studies had sample sizes above 500 even after a high attrition rate across studies (median attrition rate = 37%), and 5 studies had sample sizes under 200 (French & Dishion, 2003;Halpern, Udry, & Suchindran, 1998;McBride et al, 2003;Romo et al, 2002;Waller & Dubois, 2004) Nine studies were from three independent U.S. national samples (Longmore, Manning, & Giordano, 2001;Longmore et al, 2004;McNeely et al, 2002;Meier, 2003;Mott, Fondell, Hu, Kowaleski-Jones, & Menaghan, 1996;Raffaelli & Crockett, 2003;Schvaneveldt et al, 2001;Sieving et al, 2000). Other studies represented a range of areas of the U.S., with half (n = 13) of the 26 studies with non-national samples including a high proportion of ethnic minority adolescents and the other 13 including mostly white adolescents.…”