College students in long distance relationships feel worse when on campus
 
Waterman, E. A., Wesche, R., Leavitt, C. E., Jones, D. E., & Lefkowitz, E. S. (2017). Long-distance dating relationships, relationship dissolution, and college adjustment. Emerging Adulthood, 5, 268-279.
 
Did you start college with a romantic partner “back home”? Do you think that having a partner back home affected your wellbeing at school, your adjustment to college, and/or your engagement in regular college activities?
 
This paper has an interesting history on how we came about writing it – it’s the most collaborative writing process I’ve ever been involved in. But I think I’ll save those details for another post, and today, just write about the content of the paper.         
 
As part of a special issue on breakups in emerging adulthood, we considered how relationship status and daily location, as well as relationship dissolution, were associated with daily affect and behaviors. First semester college students completed daily surveys of their time use (including whether they were on or off campus, affect, activities, and alcohol use. They also reported whether they were in a romantic relationship, and whether the partner also lived in the same area. We used reports from their first two semesters of their relationship status and relationship length to determine whether they stayed together or broke up, and if they broke up, if they were in a new relationship.
 
In looking at relationship type at first semester, we found that overall, students had less positive affect and were lonelier on days they were on campus compared to other days. But more specifically, these associations only held for students in long distance dating relationships.  
 
Single students participated in university activities more frequently than students in long distance dating relationships.

In contrast, relationship dissolution was not associated with affect or behaviors. That is, students who experienced breakup of long distance dating relationships didn’t differ from those who did not on their affect, loneliness, or behaviors.
 
Overall, findings suggest that students in long distance dating relationships may have more difficulty adjusting to college life than other students. The innovation of our study over prior work is that we considered location, rather than assessing wellbeing/affect/loneliness at a general level. Thus, our findings suggest that differences in wellbeing (in this case, positive affect and loneliness) between students in LDDRs and other students exist only when they are on campus; when they are off campus they are similar to their peers. For students who started college in LDDRs, wellbeing did not subsequently differ whether they maintained or dissolved these relationships, suggesting resiliency.
 
“College Students in Long Distance Relationships Feel Worse When on Campus first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on July 24, 2018.”

Wesche, R., Kreager, D. A., Lefkowitz, E. S., & Siennick, S. E., (2017). Early sexual initiation and mental health: A fleeting association or enduring change? Journal of Research on Adolescence, 27, 611-627.
We have several papers on whether having sex is associated with negative wellbeing.  Much of our work in this area has used college student samples, and has generally demonstrated that sex is linked, if anything, to improved wellbeing.
 
However, other evidence suggests that early sexual intercourse (before age 16) is linked to adolescent girls’ anxiety and depression.
 
In this paper, we considered within-person associations between sexual initiation and internalizing symptoms. We used annual data on internalizing symptoms from ninth grade to age 19, as well as data on sexual initiation. In addition to generally examining whether sexual initiation is linked with increased internalizing symptoms, we also examined whether this association decayed over time.
 
We replicated prior research, demonstrating that sexual initiation was associated with increases in internalizing symptoms for early initiating girls. However, we also demonstrated that the association decayed over time. By 1 year after sexual initiation, early initiating girls were similar to girls who initiated later and to girls who were not sexually active. Sexual initiation was not associated with internalizing symptoms for boys, or for girls who initiated at age 16 or older.
 
These findings suggest that, although early sexual initiation may negatively impact female adolescents’ mental health, this association fades with time. As with many other types of disruptive life events, the negative impact of early sexual initiation decreases as girls are farther removed from the event. In fact, based on other research, being sexually active may begin to confer mental health benefits for girls, if they become regularly sexually active.
 
Finally, think about the prevention implications of these findings. Although an abstinence only perspective often states that sexual initiation in adolescence is damaging to wellbeing, our findings indicate that, even for early initiating girls, having sex does not confer long term negative consequences. Scholars consistently argue for the importance of comprehensive sex education, to benefit both girls and boys, whether sexually active or not. These findings are another piece of evidence against abstinence only education, and the complexity of associations between sexual behavior and wellbeing.
 
“Early Sexual Initiation Does Not Have Long Lasting Negative Effects on Girls’ Mental Health first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on July 17, 2018.”

Wesche, R., Vasilenko, S. A., & Lefkowitz, E. S. (2017). Latent classes of sexual behaviors: Prevalence, predictors, and consequences. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 14, 100-111.
 
Sexuality researchers (us included!) have increasingly acknowledged the importance of understanding how diverse patterns of sexual behaviors contribute to normative development and well-being. In this paper, we used a person centered approach, latent class analysis, to study patterns of sexual behavior from kissing to penetrative sex, and how different latent classes of behaviors, gender, and partner type predicted subsequent consequences of sexual behavior.
 
Latent class analysis revealed four classes of sexual behaviors: Kissing Only, Kissing and Touching, All Behaviors, and Oral and Penetrative Only. These groups differed in their consequences. Specifically, compared to individuals in the All Behaviors class, individuals in the Kissing Only class were less likely to experience a positive or a negative intrapersonal consequence of sexual behaviors. Men were less likely to report a negative intrapersonal consequence than women were. Participants in the All Behaviors class were less likely to experience a negative interpersonal consequence of sexual behaviors when they had a romantic partner than a nonromantic partner; this effect was not significant for the Kissing and Touching class and the Kissing Only class.

In summary, patterns characterized by all sexual behaviors were especially common among students with romantic sexual partners, and partner type differentially predicted consequences of sexual behaviors across classes. Findings underscore the need to recognize variation in consequences of sexual behaviors with both romantic and nonromantic sexual partners and to further explore the role of sexual behaviors in explaining variation in emotional health outcomes associated with nonromantic sexual
partnerships.
 
 
“Latent Classes of Sexual Behaviors first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on July 10, 2018.”

Kreager, D. A., Staff, J., Gauthier, R., Lefkowitz, E. S., & Feinberg, M. E. (2016). The double standard at sexual debut: Gender, sexual behavior and adolescent peer acceptance. Sex Roles, 75, 377-392.  

A few weeks ago I described our recent paper that examined when college students do and don’t invoke the sexual double standard to make judgments about people’s motivations for sex. Today I’m writing about another sexual double standard paper with a younger (11 – 16 years old) sample and focused on sexual behavior and peer acceptance. In this study, we used a longitudinal network measure of received friendship nominations to examine changes in peer acceptance based on sexual behavior.
 
In this paper, we demonstrated that, consistent with a traditional sexual double standard, female adolescents who reported having vaginal sex had decreased peer acceptance over time. In contrast, male adolescents who reported having vaginal sex had increased peer acceptance over time. However, these findings did not hold across all sexual behaviors. For instance, the findings for making out showed a reverse double standard. Female adolescents who reported making out (after controlling for sex) had increased peer acceptance over time, whereas male adolescents who reported making out (again, after controlling for having sex) had decreased peer acceptance over time.
 
Thus, findings support a continued sexual double standard among adolescents. Female adolescents can demonstrate their desirability and promote their popularity to male adolescents by engaging in “light” sexual behaviors, but female adolescents who engage in intercourse risk harming their reputation/peer acceptance. In contrast, male adolescents can display their masculinity by engaging in intercourse, whereas light sexual behaviors do not enhance their acceptance. Overall results suggest that in adolescence, the sexual double standard continues to dictate the implications of sexual behavior for adolescents’ peer relationships.
 
“The Sexual Double Standard Lives: How Adolescents’ Sexual Behavior Predicts Their Peer Acceptance first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on July 3, 2018.”

In my graduate course on Adolescent Development, I encourage students to have a final project that they can use in one way – a master’s thesis proposal, a grant proposal, part of a manuscript… something that fits with their current professional needs.

One option I provide is a creative project, “something, based on past research, which you will disseminate on the internet. This project should include a similar number of references as a literature review, but will be summarized for laypeople, not academics. You should also include a short (2 pages?) paper with a reference list that describes how the literature informed your project. There are a number of different possibilities, such as a Wikipedia entry, an on-line quiz, a website that provides advice to a particular population, or a video on YouTube.”

Students do not frequently choose this option, but when they do, I always find the outcomes interesting. This year, a doctoral student in education, who has worked in the school system with students with autism, created a website that provides resources for children with autism. I encourage you to check it out, both as an example of a creative project, and in case you know anyone who might need such resources.

A previous year, a student wrote a website to provide resources to immigrant parents. And once, a student, who was trying to get a job as an academic adviser, wrote a website that targeted at first year college students.

I think it’s great when students are able to use class assignments to push out a manuscript, and I encourage it. But sometimes students want a break from standard academic writing and I enjoy giving them an outlet for this very different type of writing as well.

“The post Last week in Adolescent Development: Creative project examples first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on June 15, 2016.”

You can visit my posts on our puberty development classes from 2015 and 2014. I won’t repeat myself.

Some of the new papers we discussed this year, that either I found, or a student brought in:

Marvan et al. (2006): Interesting data in Mexico examining reactions to puberty, and how they differ both by current age group (teenager – seniors), and how prepared they had been for first menstruation.  
 
Mora (2012): An ethnographic study of middle school Latino boys, and there interactions around puberty, physical development, physical strength, and development.
 
Shaw et al. (2013): Demonstrated that girls with obstructive sleep apnea were behind other girls on breast development.

As always, our discussions about puberty were more lively than I could truly convey in a blog post, but overall an energetic discussion.

“The post Adolescent Development: Puberty 3 first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on January 20, 2015.

I'm teaching my graduate seminar on adolescent development this semester. I teach it as a survey course, so lots of broad overview. I'm excited this semester because in addition to HDFS students, we have students from psychology, education, and nursing. Here's the syllabus:

I love hearing the students' contemporary issues presentations. It really provides students an opportunity to delve into a topic of interest to them, and exposes all of us to the most recent research in a more controversial topic. I look forward to this year's presentations because the students chose different topics than the usual suspects. Here's the full list of topics:

"The post Graduate seminar: Adolescent development" first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz's blog on January 14, 2016."

Adolescents and young adults who engage in more frequent alcohol use also tend to engage in more frequent sexual behavior. However, most findings in this area are based on cross-sectional data, and thus indicate whether individuals who tend to drink more engage in more sexual behavior, but not necessarily that alcohol use and sexual behavior are temporally linked within individuals. In a recent paper in Journal of Research on Adolescence, Megan Patrick, Jennifer Maggs, and I used data from the University Life Study to examine daily associations between alcohol use and sexual behaviors across seven semesters of college. We found that consuming more drinks and engaging in binge drinking on a given day were associated with an increased likelihood of kissing, touching, oral sex, and penetrative sex on the same day. Findings were stronger at the semester and daily level than at the person level, suggesting that the associations may actually have more to do with situational factors than with stable personal traits.

The association between alcohol use and sexual behavior was higher for students who were not in romantic relationships, and for students with stronger expectations that alcohol was linked to sex.  These findings provide some support for alcohol myopia theory. That is, students who are not in relationships may be relying on the most salient cues in the moment, such as whether a partner is available, when they are drinking. In contrast, the sexual behavior of students who are in romantic relationships and therefore have frequent access to sexual partners are likely less context and state dependent. Findings also support alcohol expectancy theory, given that students who expected alcohol use to be associated with sexual behavior demonstrated stronger associations between their own alcohol use and their sexual behavior. 

“The post Alcohol use linked to a range of sexual behaviors, especially for single students first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on January 7, 2016.”

​I’ve been in HDFS at Penn State for more than 17 years, and one thing we do well is advanced developmental methodology. Indeed, I have my share of papers with multilevel or growth curve modeling, latent class analysis, and APIM.

But I sometimes find myself coming back to the basics. And one procedure I return to again and again is straight out asking participants how they feel about something, with open-ended responses. In the University Life Study, we tracked college students for 7 semesters, and each semester asked about their engagement in 6 different sexual behaviors. Thus, we could catch the first time they engaged in any of these behaviors.  When they reported engaging in any behavior for the first time, we asked them how they felt about it. We then put together a team to code the emotions expressed in these responses. Sara Vasilenko (lead author), Megan Maas, and I reported the findings in a recent paper in Journal of Adolescent Research. In the end, because the data were nested, we had to use MLM, but I think the true story is in the simplicity.

Across the different behaviors (kissing, touching, performing oral sex, receiving oral sex, vaginal sex, and anal sex) the most commonly expressed emotions after first experience were happy, excited, fearful, and indifferent. One of my favorite quotes, reported in the paper, was a young woman describing her first experience of vaginal sex during her first year of college: “It felt awesome and I’m happy I lost my virginity to my boyfriend and I am happy I did it at the time I did. I had a great time and I don’t think I will ever regret it.” I can just picture her saying that (or texting that) to a friend. Another favorite is this young man’s description of his first experience of kissing in his third year of college: “Heart racing—disbelief. Very exhilarating.” Reponses were not all positive though; this one, by a young woman who experienced first vaginal sex in her second year, is heartbreaking: “I felt like I had made a horrible mistake. I felt ill and sick with myself. I was depressed.”

Emotions varied by type of behavior. Overall, students reported more positive than negative emotions. Students were generally more excited and less negative about kissing than about vaginal sex. Less positivity was expressed about anal sex and performing oral sex than about vaginal sex. Overall, emotions seemed to be more positive if individuals perceived low risk/threat, and/or received more direct stimulation.

There were also some gender differences, with young men more likely to report feeling happy and excited than young women about all behaviors. Young women felt more negative about vaginal sex, anal sex, and performing oral sex than young men did. It may be that young women feel more pressure to comply with behaviors before they feel ready, and also put more emphasis on foreplay than men do.

Overall, the findings highlight the positive feelings that many young adults have about sexual experiences that first occur in late adolescence/early adulthood.

“The post College students’ first experiences of six different sexual behaviors first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on December 14, 2015.”