Original articleSexual Partner Accumulation From Adolescence Through Early Adulthood: The Role of Family, Peer, and School Social Norms
Section snippets
Sampling and data collection
Data were drawn from the in-home survey sample of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a longitudinal survey of a nationally representative school-based sample of adolescents in the United States. From the baseline school sample, a stratified sample of 7th through 12th graders was selected for the in-home surveys. This sample was interviewed over four waves in 1995, 1996, 2001/2, and 2007/8, with response rates of 79%, 88%, 77%, and 80% respectively. Youth averaged
Descriptive results
Table 1 presents descriptive statistics on the imputed, weighted sample. On average, youth reported just under one partner at Wave 1, rising to more than one partner at Wave 2, and to over 11 partners by Wave 4, when youth averaged 29 years old. Although 69% of youth reported 0 sexual partners at Wave 1, this dropped quickly, to 14% by Wave 3 and 4% by Wave 4, supporting the use of a Poisson model.
Parent, peer, and school social norms predicting trajectories of partner accumulation
The first multilevel growth model, presented in Table 2, includes the full set of social norm
Discussion
Results from this study illustrate the important role that subjective and descriptive social norms from parents, peers, and schoolmates may play in predicting youths’ accumulation of sexual partners from early adolescence through early adulthood, an important risk factor for negative consequences such as STIs and unplanned pregnancies. Perhaps the strongest and most consistent pattern unearthed in this nationally representative sample was the role of youths’ perceptions of parent and peer
Acknowledgments
This research was funded with generous support from the W. T. Grant Foundation (grant 10909). This research uses data from Add Health, a program project designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris, and funded by a grant P01-HD31921 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Persons
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