ADOLESCENT FAMILY LIFE RESEARCH AWARDS - FY 2005

Social Relationships, Identity, and Teen Sexuality

Bowling Green State University
Department of Sociology
231 Williams Hall
Bowling Green, OH 43403
Principal Investigator: Monica A. Longmore, Ph.D.
Project Period: 6/05-5/07

This project will use a symbolic interactionist framework to explore the identities that adolescents develop regarding their own sexual behavior, particularly as the result of influences from social relationships with parents, peers and romantic partners. The approach is both sociological and psychological in that it looks at how adolescents’ self identities in the sexual area are influenced by the “reflected appraisals” of important others in their social environment and how these processes both lead to behavior and suggest how behavior can be modified. Other topics to be studied include portraits of identities associated with a continuum of heterosexual sexual experience from abstinence to repeated involvement in high-risk sexual situations; the role of heightened emotionality in sexual self-identity processes; and stability and change in adolescents’ sexual self-identities. Both quantitative and qualitative data will be analyzed. The data comes from an ongoing longitudinal study of over 1,000 young people (the Toledo Adolescent Relationship Study), which will add identity items to the survey instrument and in-depth qualitative interviews with a subset of the subjects at the 4th wave of data gathering. The research team will work directly with an Abstinence program consultant to ensure that results can be effectively translated into materials useful to prevention and intervention communities.

Impact of Parenting on Adolescent Sexual Risk

Johns Hopkins University
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Dept. Of Population and Family Health Sciences
615 N. Wolfe Street
Baltimore, MD 21205
Principal Investigator: Robert W. Blum, M.D., MPH, Ph.D.
Project Period: 4/01/05 - 3/31/07

Using three waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), the proposed study aims to identify pathways through which parents influence adolescent sexual risk behaviors in both the short term and over time. Three specific aims of the study include the following: 1) To determine whether maternal communication about sex has an impact on adolescent sexual behavior independent of positive parenting; 2) To explore whether positive parenting has a direct effect on sexual behaviors during adolescence and young adulthood or whether the effects are mediated through positive youth development behaviors and positive adult social roles; and 3) To investigate the influence of positive parenting over time as adolescents move into young adulthood. The study is grounded in a positive youth development framework where youths’ developmental and behavioral outcomes are a reflection of the context in which they live, i.e., the social context of peers, neighborhood, and family. The intent of the study is to add to our understanding of how parents influence the sexual risk behavior of their youth and, thereby, improve the development of programs aimed at reducing such risks among youth.

Female Adolescent Risk Behaviors

San Francisco State University
Behavioral and Social Sciences
2017 Mission Street, STE 300
San Francisco, CA 94110
Principal Investigator: Deborah L. Tolman, Ed.D.
Project Period: 4/05 - 3/08

This project will conduct a phenomenological study of noncoital sexual behaviors among adolescent girls to provide empirically-based evidence for developing strategies and interventions for educators, clinicians and parents to either prevent this risky behavior or to change the behavior in favor of safer choices. Specific goals of this research include: developing an understanding of the phenomenology of oral intercourse on the part of adolescent girls, including why they engage in this behavior and what it means to them; to determine in what ways they evaluate the health risks, including how their understanding or misunderstanding of the risks affects their decisions; and to elaborate the phenomenology of the behavior by comparing early versus middle adolescents, four racial/ethnic groups, those who use protection versus those who do not, and the role of differences in adolescent girls’ health beliefs, gender beliefs and behavioral contexts. Participant surveys and in-depth clinical interviews will be conducted. Three standard methods for analyzing qualitative data will be used: grounded theory analysis; narrative analysis and conceptually-clustered matrices. Three forms of validity check will be implemented.