Child & Adolescent Development, Essay Example

Please answer the following questions in detail (add another sheet if necessary). Turn this page in with your paper.

• Write the article citation (in APA format) here. This will appear as the title on your paper.

Atkins, R., & Hart, D. (2008). The Under-controlled do it first: childhood personality and sexual debut. Research in Nursing & Health, 31, 626-639.

• What is the article examining (e.g., the topic(s))

Due to the growing problems associated with teenage pregnancy, the author’s developed the study to analyze the individuals’ personalities as they relate to the debut, or first occurrence, of sexual intercourse.

• What are the question(s) the author(s) is asking (research questions)?

The authors begin by asking which personality traits tend to result in increased or decreased time for sexual debut.  They further sought to examine how personality traits interact with one another in order to impact behavior.  The authors tested how an individual’s social environment and peer influence mediate the association between personality and sexual debut.

• What do the authors expect to find (hypotheses)?

The authors hypothesized that under-controlled children would be more likely than resilient or over-controlled children to experience an earlier sexual debut.  The authors attempted to control for controlling for age, sex, cognitive achievement, race/ethnicity, maternal education, family structure, and household income.  Nevertheless, they still believed that despite these controlled characteristics, the under-controlled children would be more likely to experience earlier sexual debut.  Furthermore, the authors hypothesized that the association of childhood personality and timing of first sexual intercourse would correlate with participation in social institutions and by peers during the ages of 11-12 years of age.

• How did the study address these questions (participants, methods, measures)?

Participants:

1,117 participants were chosen from a previous study entitled The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979.  This study is an ongoing study and provided results up to 2004 for the authors.  The 1,170 participants were racially, ethnically, and economically diverse, which intentionally increases the likelihood that the findings of the study would be generalized and could enable more accurate conclusions to be drawn from their responses.  Children that had previously had sex before the age of 11 were not included because of suspicion of child abuse.  In all, the study was evenly divided by sex.  Roughly half the sample was non-Black or non-Hispanic, 30% were Black, and 21% were Hispanic.

Measures:

Self-report           Behavioral           Physiological

What was the topic of the questionnaires used (list all that apply)?

The questionnaires came in multiple formats, but examined the child’s demographics, personality, home environment, the length of the mother’s formal education, family income, and cognitive achievement during the Time 1 analysis for the participants when the child was 5-6 years old.

The Time 2 analysis was taken when the child met the age of 11-12.  These questionnaires focused on church attendance, team and club membership, and peer pressure.  Finally, the Time 3 analysis was taken when the child was 15-16 years old and asked questions relating to any experiences with sexual intercourse.

What was the focus of the behavioral assessments (list all that apply)?

The focus relied on what personality traits the children had, their socioeconomic background, their membership status in clubs or teams, and finally, their sexual debut.

What was the physiological assessment done?  What does it measure?

The physiological assessment was taken by maternal reports on the child’s cognitive development and achievements to help determine intelligence levels.  Race and gender were also assessed during this study.

Method:

(Circle those that apply, or expand)

Longitudinal        Cross-sectional           One time, one cohort

Do you see any possible problems with the participants? If so, what?

The only problem associated with the participants is that the personality types were never re-tested as the child continued to grow in age.  The original maternal reports classified the children into particular personality types and the change in personality through adolescence was never taken into consideration.  Likewise, any traumatic events such as divorce or a death of a parent or loved one, was also never tested to help draw any conclusions on the experiential impacts associate with this topic.

Do you see any possible problems with the measures? If so what?

The overall measures were fairly clear.  However, there should have been a better analysis that could have been utilized to examine the children’s personality types without including the biases of the maternal reports.  Such reports may have placed children into inappropriate personality groups.  Likewise, the researchers never re-tested to see if there was a change in personality through adolescence.  Despite this, the measures were fairly reasonable and could be viewed as legitimate for further research or used to draw appropriate conclusions.

• What did they find (results)? Were their findings what they thought they would find?

The results found that the original hypothesis that under-controlled personality types would likely undertake behaviors that promoted early sexual debut than the other personality types.  However, the analysis of the church attendance fell under the criteria of the second hypothesis that examine club or group membership.  The authors originally believed that such membership would increase the likelihood of earlier sexual debut; however, this type of membership typically promotes a deeper moral ground than other membership types, such as sports teams or clubs.  Nevertheless, the hypotheses were overall supported by the study.