Brent C. Miller

Parental Discipline and Control Attempts in Relation to Adolescent Sexual Attitudes and Behavior.

Survey data from adolescents (ages 15-18) and their parents were analyzed to assess how reports of parental discipline and control were related to adolescent sexual attitudes and behavior. The sample was a nonrandom availability sample of 836 students in 1983 and 1587 students in 1984. Data were collected from US school districts in Salt Lake City Utah and New Mexico in 1983 and in California in 1984. Adolescents perceptions of parental strictness and rules show a curvilinear relationship to their sexual attitudes and behavior; sexual permissiveness and intercourse experience was highest among adolescents who viewed their parents as not being strict at all or having any rules lowest among those who reported that their parents were moderately strict and intermediate among teens who perceived their parents to be very strict and have many rules. The parents own reports of their dating rules were less strongly related to their adolescent sons and daughters reports of sexual attitudes and behavior. Adolescents who perceived their parents as very strict reported more permissive attitudes than did adolescents whose parents were perceived as slightly less strict. If parents discipline was viewed as being very strict their adolescent children were more likely to report sexual intercourse experience than were teens who viewed their parents strictness to be in the moderate range. This relationship was very similar for both males and females.

Pubertal Development, Parental Communication, and Sexual Values in Relation to Adolescent Sexual Behaviors

There is great interest in understanding adolescent sexual behavior because of its links to unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. This studys purpose was to analyze biological and social antecedents of adolescent sexual intentions and behaviors, including age, pubertal development, quality of parent/adolescent communication, and adolescent sexual values. Analyses were based on longitudinal data collected in 1991, 1992, and 1993 from 473 families. Structural equation modeling was used to test direct and indirect effects among the time-ordered variables separately by gender Both for males and females, parent/adolescent communication quality was related positively to adolescent sexual abstinence values, abstinence values had a strong negative effect on sexual intentions, and sexual intentions had a significant positive effect on sexual behaviors. Parent/adolescent communication quality was related directly to sexual intentions measured 1 year later among females only. Early pubertal development, relative to same-age peers, was related directly to sexual behaviors of both genders.

Comparisons of Adopted and Nonadopted Adolescents in a Large, Nationally Representative Sample

There are conflicting findings about whether adopted children have more psychological and behavioral problems than nonadoptees. Research results are discrepant partly because many previous studies were based on small clinical samples or on samples biased by self-selection. A nationally representative school survey (Add Health) was used to compare adopted (n = 1,587) and nonadopted adolescents (total N = 87,165) across a wide variety of measures. Standardized mean differences show that adopted adolescents are at higher risk in all of the domains examined, including school achievement and problems, substance use, psychological well-being, physical health, fighting, and lying to parents. Demographic and background variable breakdowns show that the effect sizes for differences between adopted and nonadopted adolescents were larger for males, younger or older adolescents, Hispanics or Asians, and adolescents living in group homes or with parents of low education. Distributional analyses revealed approximately a 1:1 ratio of adopted to nonadopted adolescents in the middle ranges of the outcome variables but a ratio of 3:1 or greater near the tails of the distributions. These data clearly show that more adopted adolescents have problems of various kinds than their nonadopted peers; effect sizes were small to moderate based on mean differences, but comparisons of distributions suggest much larger proportions of adopted than nonadopted adolescents at the extremes of salient outcome variables.

An Exploratory Study about Inaccuracy and Invalidity in Adolescent Self-Report Surveys

Using Add Health data, the authors provide evidence that some adolescents gave inaccurate and/or invalid responses on a self-administered questionnaire. Further analyses show that these adolescents were much more likely to report extreme levels on psychosocial and behavioral outcome variables. A distinction was made between inaccurate responders (e.g., inaccurate/false responses due to carelessness or confusion) and jokesters (e.g., intentional false responses). The findings show that the jokesters showed considerably more pronounced distorting effects on some psychosocial and behavioral outcome variables than the inaccurate responders did. The authors suggest that although this jokester effect may not seriously bias the results in studies that focus on large groups, for research focusing on some special subgroups (e.g., adoption groups, immigrant groups, disability groups), this effect could pose a serious challenge for the validity of research findings.

The Development of Romantic Relationships in Adolescence: Romantic and Sexual Relationship Development During Adolescence

Romantic and sexual relationships have a unique intensity during the second decade of life. Childhood is widely perceived as a time of relative quiescence compared to the romantic and sexual exuberance of youth. Romantic feelings and sexual behavior are not completely dormant during childhood, but adolescence is qualitatively different; by the early or middle teens, the vast majority of adolescents become preoccupied with romantic feelings (Medora, Goldstein, & Von der Hellen, 1994; Savin-Williams & Berndt, 1990) and begin a lifetime trajectory of overt sexual experiences (Miller, Christopherson, & King, 1993). One study that monitored the daily subjective states of adolescents found that the strongest association between puberty and emotional experience is the specific feeling of being in love (Richards & Larson, 1993). How is the development of romantic feelings and sexual behaviors related to one another? We conjecture that almost all children and early adolescents have romantic ideas (“crushes”) about persons with whom they have no sexual contact. We further conjecture that romantic thoughts and interactions typically precede sexual involvement in the process of normal adolescent development. However, through choice or coercion, some children and adolescents have “body-centered” sexual experiences devoid of romantic meanings. There is a growing awareness that the development of intimate relationships can be profoundly affected by coercive sexual experiences.

Sexual attitudes and behavior of high school students in relation to background and contextual factors

Although premarital sexuaUty has been an important area of research for several decades, researchers (e.g., Ehrmann, 1964; Reiss, 1960, 1967) empha? sized attitudes or standards and mostly used college-age samples. One of the major recent shifts in this area has been toward studying younger adolescents (Chilman, 1983; Coales & Stokes, 1986; Diepold & Young, 1979; Sorensen, 1973). National sample surveys have documented that the proportion of adolescents who have had intercourse increased during the 1970s (Zelnik, Kantner, & Ford, 1981) and increases with age (Pratt, Mosher, Bachrach, & Horn, 1984). Estimates in 1986 were that 53% of female and 61% of male 17-year-olds have had intercourse (Harris & Associates, 1986). Another factor traditionally associated with adolescent sexual behavior is more widespread sexual activity among males than females, but there is con? siderable evidence that sex differences are diminishing (Coales & Stokes, 1986; Jessor & Jessor, 1975; Robinson & Jedlicka, 1982). ReUgious participation and church attendance are inversely related to sexual permissiveness of college students (Davids, 1982; Notzer, Leuvan, Mashiach, & Soffer, 1984; Reiss, 1967; Reiss & Miller, 1979; Sack, Keller, & Hinkle, 1984; Young, 1982) and younger teenagers (Harris & Associates, 1986). Living with a single parent is related to more permissive teen sexual attitudes and behavior (Harris & Associates, 1986), even after controlling relevant contaminating variables (Rodgers, 1983; Thornton & Camburn, 1987) as is lower social class (Chilman, 1983; Harris & Associates). The present analyses were undertaken, first, to go beyond the previously reported bivariate relationships and ascertain how a number of background and contextual variables relate to sexual attitudes and behavior when they are combined in a multivariate analysis. A second purpose was to do this analysis with a recent and younger (high school-aged) sample of adolescents.

Theories of Adolescent Heterosexual Behavior

Although some of the research on adolescent heterosexual behavior links empirical results to existing theories, many studies appear to be the-oretically barren and uninformed. Two of the major paradigms on sexuality-that it is both inner driven and socially shaped-are used to organize theoretical strands in previous work. This paper reviews research and theoretical perspectives that seem to be most useful in understanding adolescent sexual behavior, and then takes modest steps toward integrating and extending theoretical explanations of this phenomenon.

Family Configuration in Relation to the Sexual Behavior of Female Adolescents.

Several recent studies have reported that aspects of family configuration including both sibling constellation and parents marital status are related to adolescent sexual intercourse experience. However these findings often have been based on relatively small community or regional samples and the analyses sometimes have not included adequate controls. The present study based on a national probability sample of 15-to-19-year-old women replicates only one of the earlier results. Teenage young women who have been raised by a single parent are more likely to have nonmarital sexual intercourse than young women from intact marriages. However this effect is diminished by controlling for age and race social class and religion. When all of these variables are entered first in a regression equation the effect of parents marital status on daughters sexual status is greatly reduced but remains marginally significant. Sibling constellation effects reported in some earlier studies are not evident in these data. (Authors)

Changes in reports and incidence of child abuse following natural disasters

OBJECTIVE The aim of this research was to investigate if there is a higher incidence of child abuse following major natural disasters. METHODOLOGY Child abuse reports and substantiations were analyzed, by county, for 1 year before and after Hurricane Hugo, the Loma Prieta Earthquake. and Hurricane Andrew. Counties were included if damage was widespread, the county was part of a presidential disaster declaration, and if there was a stable data collection system in place. RESULTS Based on analyses of numbers, rates, and proportions, child abuse reports were disproportionately higher in the quarter and half year following two of the three disaster events (Hurricane Hugo and Loma Prieta Earthquake). CONCLUSIONS Most, but not all, of the evidence presented indicates that child abuse escalates after major disasters. Conceptual and methodological issues need to be resolved to more conclusively answer the question about whether or not child abuse increases in the wake of natural disasters. Replications of this research are needed based on more recent disaster events.

Adolescent self esteem in relation to sexual attitudes and behavior.

This study examines the relationship between self-esteem and sexual behavior in a high school-aged relatively conservative sample. The study is based on 1983 and 1984 samples (total n=2423) of adolescents attending public high schools in Utah New Mexico and California. Entire classes of high school students from 20 high schools were asked to participate in the study. Adolescents were aged 14-19 when the survey was conducted. The sample was about 2/3 female and about 3/4 white. Attitudes about premarital sex were measured by answers to a question asking for the respondents attitude toward teenagers having sexual relations before marriage. Possible answers were 1) always wrong 2) usually wrong 3) neither right nor wrong 4) usually all right or 5) always all right. Sexual intercourse experience was measured by answers to the question of whether the respondent had ever had sexual relations once or more than once. Religious affiliation and activity were asked in the survey along with many other questions about demographic characteristics and family relationships. Self-esteem was measured using Rosenbergs scale. Study results are consistent with the normative context hypothesis: in groups with more conservative norms (Mormons frequent church attenders) the relationship between self-esteem and sexual intercourse experience is negative but there is no significant relationship between these variables in groups with less conservative norms. The direction of the relationship also depends on personal beliefs; the correlation between sexual intercourse experience and self-esteem is negative among those who believe that it is wrong for teenagers to have sex before marriage and it is positive among those who believe that premarital sex is all right.