Original article
A Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Transition from Virgin to Nonvirgin Status

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2007.08.014Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

To identify demographic and psychosocial predictors for early sexual initiation (ESI) among middle school midwestern suburban and rural youth.

Methods

A total of 884 middle school students completed a pretest and a 1-year follow-up questionnaire. At Time 1, 52 students reported already having initiated sexual behavior; the remaining 832 students were included in our analyses. The sample was 58.5% female and 92.8% white, with a mean age of 12.84 years. At Time 2, 105 students (12.6%) had changed their coital status from virgin to nonvirgin. A stepwise logistic regression was conducted to explore the relationship between the demographic and psychosocial variables measured at Time 1 (including grade, academic performance, mother’s education, family structure, religiosity, self-esteem [school, home, and peer], perceived sexual norms, abstinence self-efficacy, peer pressure, etc.) and reported sexual behavior at Time 2. The analyses were conducted separately by gender.

Results

For both genders, academic achievement was positively related and peer self-esteem was negatively related to ESI. In addition, self-efficacy and frequency of prayer were negatively related to ESI for boys, and peer pressure, age, and traditional family structure were negatively related to ESI for girls.

Conclusions

Risk and protective factors for ESI should be examined separately by gender. Use of a facet-specific measure of self-esteem revealed very different relationships among the peer, home, and school aspects of self-esteem and transition to nonvirgin status; therefore, researchers are encouraged to use area-specific rather than global measures of self-esteem.

Section snippets

Biological factors

Studies consistently find that older adolescents and boys are more likely to report early sexual experiences. Some studies have found that early physical maturity is related to early sexual initiation (ESI) [8], [9], [10], but others have not [11].

Environment

Family structure has been found to be significantly related to ESI [12], [13], [14]. Issues of family structure are often compounded by poverty [15], family history of early pregnancies [11], and family and community dysfunction [15], [16]. Family communication has been touted as a key to preventing risk behaviors in children [4]; but in a recent analysis, greater parent child communication about sex and birth control and/or pregnancy were not found to be consistently related to virginity

Attitudes

Santelli et al found peer norms to be among the best predictors of sexual behavior; they also found that self-efficacy, although protective for 7th graders, was a risk factor for 8th graders [19]. Peer pressure is often blamed for risk behavior in adolescents; however, because the concept is often confused with peer conformity, perceived peer norms, and popularity, and measured by negative behaviors, it is difficult to compare analyses [20].

Studies of the relationship between self-esteem and

Connectedness

Religiosity has been found to be a significant protective factor for ESI [23]. The effect of religion has varied by denomination [24], gender [25], and race [12].

Most research has found academic achievement to be protective relative to ESI [8], [12], [26]. Because of the paucity of longitudinal studies, it has been unclear whether lower grades in school predate sexual activity or are a result of it. However, a recent longitudinal analysis indicates that for white students, the effect is

Participants and procedures

Students in grades 5–8 from mostly rural and suburban schools in the Midwest were recruited for an Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs grant-funded project. Preliminary analyses found that there was no signifiant difference between the intervention and comparison groups in delaying initiation of sexual intercourse; therefore students from the intervention and control schools were combined for the purposes of this study. Longitudinal data were available for 884 of these students who

Initial analysis

At Time 2, 105 (12.6%) changed their coital status from virgin to nonvirgin, 56 (16.2%) boys and 49 (10.1%) girls. Table 3 contains the percentage of nonvirgins by demographic characteristic. Chi-square and Mantel-Haenszel Chi-square statistics are reported for the relationships between the demographic variables and coital status.

Demographics

Better academic achievement and religious importance were the only two protective factors for sexual abstinence that were significant for both genders. In addition,

Discussion

This sample is unique among longitudinal studies addressing adolescent sexual postponement, many of which have used urban minority samples [37], [38] or measured intention rather than behavior [39]. As is reported in other studies, many of the risk factors differed by gender [18], [40].

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