Why you should do a research project as an undergraduate
 
There are a few different reasons why someone might get involved in a research project as an undergraduate student. First, a few students in social science fields (e.g., HDFS, psychology, sociology) already have an inherent interest in research. They seek out involvement in a research project because they are excited about research and scientific inquiry and want to get involved. Second, students in the honors program usually are required to get involved in research at some point, leading up to the experience of doing an honors thesis. These students seek out involvement on a research project because someone told them to. Third, some students want to go to doctoral programs and know that getting involved in research as an undergraduate student is important for their grad school applications. So, they get involved in research to check that box off on their “things to do to get into grad school list.”
 
Even if none of these three reasons apply to you, however, you should seriously consider getting involved in a research project with a faculty member. Often students do so in their junior year, though if you have time to do it as a sophomore, it may open more opportunities.

What do you do on a research project?  Obviously, student research activities can vary dramatically depending on the field, topic, and stage of research. But, these are common activities:

• Attend meetings where faculty and students talk about research ideas, plan research studies, and talk about research findings and papers they are writing
• Help with data collection, with activities such as administering surveys, participating in experiments (e.g., performing tests on babies; helping participants with fMRI), calling and/or scheduling participants
• Help with data entry and data cleaning
• Code data, e.g., watch videotapes, listen to audiotapes, or watch live to rate participants on different behaviors or characteristics
• Find research articles on specific topics

 
Why should you participate in a research project if you’re not in the honors program and you’re not thinking about doctoral programs? Or if one of these things is true for you, but you’re not yet a senior?

• Get to learn more about how to do research, and a particular research project

• Get to know a specific mentor. At large universities, you may not have many opportunities to talk to faculty, even in your major. When you apply for graduate school or jobs, it can be challenging to find faculty to write you letters of recommendation. But, if you participate on a research project your mentor will get to know you well and will most likely be willing to write a letter for you.
• If you are planning to do a thesis, starting research earlier in the program gives you a chance to make sure a particular project/mentor is a good fit before committing to a yearlong project like a thesis.
• If you're planning to go straight to graduate school, you will be applying in Fall of your senior year. If you wait until senior year to get involved in a research project, your mentor will only know you for a couple of months before you ask him/her to write a letter. If you start sophomore or junior year, s/he will know you much better.
• Participating on a research project often opens up many other opportunities. You may have opportunities to apply for funding in the summer to continue your research. You may get to present your research at an undergraduate (or even local/national) research conference, increasing your networking opportunities and building up your resume.

In the 26 years since I started graduate school, I’ve supervised about 200 undergraduate students in research projects, as many as 24 in one semester. Some of these students went onto doctoral programs and are now professors. Others went onto masters programs to end up as social workers, academic advisors, or sex therapists. Others went into careers that have nothing to do with HDFS and perhaps not research, such as public relations, insurance, or lawyer. During grad school, one of my students started the project saying he wanted to go to a doctoral program in psychology. About a year after he graduated, he sent me a letter saying that watching me as a grad student helped him realize that was not what he wanted to do in life – and he was now a prison guard (yes, we made many jokes about how watching grad student Eva made him turn to an easier life – prison guard). That’s okay – better to realize your preferences sooner than later. Through the years I have gotten to know some of these students well, and have enjoyed watching their lives on social media, and even occasionally attending their wedding. Once, when I was on sabbatical and without childcare, a former undergraduate research assistant, who had become a professor, even offered to hang out with my children so my husband and I could both go to back to school night! 

Your involvement on a research project is often critical to the faculty member or graduate student’s completion of that research project. But it also can be critical to you in multiple ways – figuring out what you want to do career-wise, making connections that will help you later, and getting an enriching experience outside of the classroom.

“Why you should do a research project first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on October 23, 2018.”

Last week I described different types of funding during graduate school. There are some students who must apply for funding external to their department during graduate school. Students in programs that don’t guarantee funding may scramble to support themselves throughout their graduate program. For these students, applying for funding outside their department is survival.
 
Other students, however, enter doctoral programs with 4-5 years of guaranteed funding – often in an assistantship with tuition, stipend, and access to health insurance in exchange to 10-20 hours of work per week. Students with generous departmental support may believe they do not have to apply for funding outside their department during graduate school, because they already have support. Students may also feel that spending time applying for additional funds is time they could spend getting research done. However, there are several benefits to applying for external support even if you don’t financially need it. So, before you write off getting funding external to your department (whether applying within or outside your university), consider the following.
 

• Money. You may not need money to support you, but it’s rare that graduate students feel so financially comfortable that they would turn down extra money. I’ve never heard a grad student say, my stipend is so generous, I really don’t know what to do with all this money. When we have scholarship competitions (not for huge amounts of money), I’m surprised at the small number of students who actually apply. Who wouldn’t want extra money, even if it’s for more flexibility for going to the movies or out for dinner, or for your savings account?
  
• Dissertation research. You may have funds to support yourself, but what about funds to do the dissertation (or other) research project you really want to do? Students often use their mentor’s, another faculty member’s, or publicly available data. But is there a research project you really want to do during graduate school, and could a couple of thousand dollars provide support to complete that project? Grants can support a range of research expenses, such as participant payment, access to measures or software, travel, and other research costs.
• Build your CV: Demonstrating you have successfully secured your own funding positions you well for many jobs. If you are interested in a tenure track position at a top research university, demonstrating the ability to secure funding can be critical. There are other jobs with similar expectations – e.g., soft money jobs at medical schools (though sometimes you can demonstrate this ability after you start the position and start off paid on others’ projects). In addition, many people who work at research institutes have to secure external funding to support various projects. When I received a tenure track position at Penn State right out of my PhD program, I was told the only reason they considered my application was that I had gotten an F31 from NIMH. I know that was 20 years ago, and it’s even harder now to get tenure track positions without doing a post doc first, but whenever you go on the faculty job market, demonstrating your ability to secure funding is highly valuable.
• Practice: For many different careers (tenure track faculty at research-oriented university; faculty at medical school or other soft money position; research institutes), part of your job will be to obtain external funding. This need isn’t limited to researchers working at large universities and institutes. Many smaller local agencies and organizations survive on grants and contracts. So, you might as well get started as a graduate student when the stakes may be lower, and you have built in mentors to help you with the process. Also, habits you form in graduate school often stick – make yourself the person who applies for funding now, and you’ll consider it part of your job for the rest of your career.

 
“ Why you should apply for fellowships and grants during grad school first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on October 4, 2018.”

Lefkowitz, E. S., Vasilenko, S. A., Wesche, R., & Maggs, J. L. (in press). Changes in diverse sexual and contraceptive behaviors across college. Journal of Sex Research.
 
I did it – I have now blogged about all of our published and in press papers from the past three years, posting weekly about our research papers for about three months. So, this post is the last one about a specific paper until we get another paper published (and there are currently four submitted, two with R&R’s, so fingers crossed it won’t be too long).
 
In my continued efforts to be fully transparent, particularly for the benefit of junior scholars, this paper took a while to publish. I’ve written before about publishing perseverance and the time it took us 8 years and 4 rejections to get a paper published.
 
I don’t think that the paper I’m writing about today had QUITE as long a road to publication. Well, let me go look up the details. So, it looks like I proposed this paper about 7 years ago, had a draft of the intro and methods 4 years ago, added the results about 3 years ago, and had a full draft over 2 years ago. And it looks like I first submitted it only over a year ago, and that it was only rejected from one journal (somehow, my memory is of more rejections – funny). So I guess the delay was much more in my writing it, than in multiple review processes. I think I remember more rejections because I really saw this paper as a developmental paper and therefore wanted to publish it in a developmental journal, even after the first rejection from a developmental journal. But between submissions I eventually changed my mind and recognized it was a better fit for a sexuality journal, where it found its home.
 
As with many of our other papers, we approached this paper from a normative developmental framework of sexuality. Our perspective is:

1. It is typical, appropriate, and healthy to express interest in and explore sexuality during adolescence and young adulthood
2. A healthy framework shifts the focus from identifying risk factors to understanding a range of sexual experiences, some of which (e.g., kissing, touching) do not confer the same physical risks as vaginal and anal sex
3. To recognize that individual and contextual factors like gender and relationship status influence and shape sexual experiences
4. To acknowledge that sexuality is a developmental phenomenon that changes across adolescence and young adulthood with both age and context
5. Despite risks of sexual behavior, sexual behavior also confers benefits to physical, mental, and relationship health

 
The unique aspects of this paper were that we:

1. Examined rates using longitudinal data with frequent assessment – assessing participants every semester for seven semesters. Most work in this area uses cross-sectional data; existing longitudinal data generally have long gaps between assessments, which may fail to capture variability during a time of rapid change
2. Considered a range of sexual and contraceptive behaviors in the same sample, rather than simply focusing on vaginal sex and/or condom use
3. Considered performing and receiving oral sex separately, given conflicting data on gender differences in rates of oral sex
4. Included both condoms and non-condom contraception, to include more female-focused contraceptive behaviors
5. Considered time-varying changes in romantic relationship status and their association with sexual and contraceptive behaviors

 
We found that:

• Likelihood of kissing, touching, performing oral sex, receiving oral sex, and engaging in penetrative sex in the past 3 months increased with time
• Men were more likely to report receiving oral sex and using condoms in the past 3 months than women were
• Students were more likely to report kissing, touching, performing oral sex, receiving oral sex, and penetrative sex in semesters they were in a serious relationship than semester they were not. They were less likely to report using condoms when they were in a serious relationship compared to when they were not.
• There was a three-way interaction for both contraceptive behaviors. Specifically, consistent use of any contraception in the past three months decreased over time more for men in semesters they were not in a relationship than for men in semesters they were, or for women. In addition, condom use decreased for men regardless of relationship status, and for women in semesters they were in a relationship, but not in semesters women were not.

In summary, rates of participation in penetrative and nonpenetrative behaviors generally increase, whether young adults are in relationships or not. Still, relationship status was an important determinant of engaging in all types of sexual behaviors, as well as consistently using any contraception. Our findings suggest the value of continued sexual health promotion across college, not limited to the first year orientation.
 
 
“ Developmental changes in diverse sexual and contraceptive behaviors across college first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on September 25, 2018.”

Wesche, R., Kreager, D. A., & Lefkowitz, E. S. (in press). Sources of social influence on adolescents’ alcohol use. Journal of Research on Adolescence.

Peer relationships contribute to adolescents’ alcohol use, but the mechanisms are not fully known. Adolescents may influence each other’s attitudes; they may model each other’s behaviors; or they may spend time in unstructured socializing settings without adult supervisors present. In this paper, we considered all three potential sources of influence: attitudes, behaviors, and unstructured socializing. We also considered three different types of peers: friends, romantic partners, and romantic partners’ friends.
 
We used data from the PROSPER study, a longitudinal study of rural adolescents followed beginning in sixth grade. Each wave, adolescents nominated friends and romantic partners, and we used these data to determine friends’, romantic partners’, and romantic partner’s friends’ alcohol attitudes and behaviors. We used participant report of unstructured socializing with friends and romantic partners, and romantic partners’ reports for unstructured socializing with romantic partners’ friends.
 
Behavior: Adolescents were drunk more frequently in waves when their friends, romantic partners, and romantic partners’ friends were drunk more frequently. However, when all in the same model, only friends’ and romantic partners’ friends’ behaviors remained significant.
 
Attitudes: adolescents were drunk more frequently in waves when their friends, romantic partners, and romantic partners’ friends had more positive alcohol related attitudes. However, when all in the same model, only romantic partners’ attitudes remained significant.
 
Unstructured socializing: Unstructured socializing was not associated with adolescents’ drunkenness.However, there was an interaction with time for unstructured socializing with friends. Older adolescents increased their drunkenness frequency when they engaged in more frequent unstructured socializing with friends, but this association was not there at earlier ages. In addition, there was an interaction with gender and time for unstructured socializing of romantic partners with friends. Older girls increased their drunkenness frequency when their romantic partners engaged in more frequent unstructured socializing with friends.
 
Finding suggest that multiple peer relationships matter for alcohol use. Findings also indicate that the mechanisms differ by type of relationship. Friends’ and partners’ friends’ behavior seem to matter more than their attitudes. In contrast, romantic partners’ attitudes matter more than their behaviors. It may be that friends and partners’ friends serve as behavioral models, whereas romantic partners’ beliefs may have more influence. This difference may be because we limited friends to same sex friends, and partners to heterosexual partners, adolescents may model peers of the same sex, but, within a romantic context, adhere to the belief system of the other sex. Findings also suggest the increasing importance of unstructured socializing as a potential setting for dangerous levels of alcohol use.
 
“Adolescents’ friends, romantic partners, and romantic partners’ friends matter for alcohol use first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on September 18, 2018.”

Lefkowitz, E. S., Wesche, R., Picci, G., & Hochgraf, A. K. (in press). Daily associations between kissing and affect during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood. Journal of Research on Adolescence.
 
A few weeks ago I wrote about our paper considering what distinguishes first year college students who have never kissed a partner from students who have. We followed up that paper by examining daily associations between kissing and affect in the same sample. Our examination of kissing and affect was motivated by a normative developmental framework, and an interest in understanding the value of kissing during adolescence and the transition to adulthood. We know that kissing is a meaningful and important experience for several reasons.  

Prior work in this area considered predominantly between person differences – do people who kiss (ever) or people who kiss more frequently differ from those who never kiss or kiss less frequently? In this paper, we used daily diary data to consider whether positive and negative affect on a given day was associated with kissing on that day. We used seven semesters of data, with students completing daily diaries for two weeks each semester.
 
We found that kissing was associated with affect at the daily level – students reported more positive and less negative affect on days they kissed compared to other days. This association existed even after controlling for a number of known correlates of affect, such as vaginal sex, weekend days, relationship status, and demographic factors. A number of control variables were also associated with affect, which we describe in detail in the paper.
 
Thus, our findings demonstrate that it is not simply that students who tend to kiss more frequently have more positive well-being. Instead, it’s that on days when students kiss a partner, they experience more positive and less negative affect. These findings inform comprehensive sex education, suggesting that such programs could incorporate an emphasis on the value of kissing as an alternative to vaginal sex if individuals do not feel emotionally ready, or do not have the means to adequately protect themselves from STI’s or unintended pregnancy. 
 
“Late Adolescents Are Happier on Days They Kiss first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on September 11, 2018.”

Waterman, E. A., Wesche, R., & Lefkowitz, E. S. (in press). Longitudinal correlates of peer sexual communication quality in young adulthood. Sexuality Research and Social Policy.

I’m excited to say that today is July 25th. But (hopefully) you are reading this post on September 4th. Which means I have succeeded this summer at getting ahead of blog posting, and getting 2 posts up a week, consistently from May 25 through at least September 4. I feel like Andrew Gelman. Okay not, because he posts daily and I think he is now something like nine months ahead (how? how?). And also for many other reasons that have nothing to do with frequency of blog posting. But still, I am going to savor this moment of feeling happy about it before I start realizing there is less than one month of summer left and I need to turn my attention elsewhere.
 
And now, turning my attention to today’s topic. In my own prior research, and more broadly, frequently in the literature, people consider how communication with friends about sex is associated with outcomes of interest, particularly sexual attitudes and/or behavior. In this paper, we wanted to understand what is associated with peer communication itself. That is, how might we be able to understand characteristics that relate to better or worse communication with friends about sex?  In addition, we were interested in within person differences. That is, not just knowing how people who feel comfortable talking about sex different from people who don’t. But, more specifically, understanding what differentiates when people feel more or less comfortable talking about sex. For instance, we didn’t just want to understand whether being sexually active was associated with better communication about sex (a between person question). We wanted to understand whether students had better sex communication quality in semesters that they were sexually active compared to semesters they were not (a within person question).
 
We considered individual characteristics (gender, sexual behavior, sexual attitudes) and peer characteristics (romantic relationship status, frequency of peer sexual communication, and perceived peer approval of sex). We followed college students across college, assessing them four times from Fall of first year to Fall of fourth year. We asked about sex communication with their closest same sex friend at university.
 
Overall, quality of communication with friends about sex improved across college.
 
Individual factors: Women had better quality communication than men. Although individuals who were sexually active during more semesters generally reported better communication quality, there were no within person associations with behavior. However, both the between and within person levels were significant for sexual attitudes. That is, overall, students who had more conservative attitudes about sex had worse communication about sex. And, during semesters when students had more conservative attitudes, they had worse communication about sex.
 
Peer characteristics: Peer communication quality did not differ by romantic relationship status. Frequency of communication mattered at both the between and within person levels. That is, students who overall talked about sex more had better communication, and students had better communication in semesters when they talked about sex more. Perceived peer approval was not associated with quality of communication.
 
In summary, findings demonstrate that both individual and peer characteristics matter for communication quality. Findings also have important implications for peer led health promotion programs, which often rely on trained peers to lead sex-related discussions.
 
“Peer Sexual Communication Across College first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on September 4, 2018.”

So, you just started your first semester of graduate school, and this week your professors handed out your syllabi. You are feeling shell-shocked. How in the world are you supposed to read 15-25 articles a week across your 3-5 graduate seminars? Not only that, you started reading them, and some seem dense, wordy, or convoluted – some you’re not even sure you can follow. And, you are likely balancing this reading with writing (new blog post coming soon), learning methods, starting a new research or teaching assistantship, or both, adjusting to living in a new city/state/country, and trying to maintain something of a life outside of school. And sleep. Precious sleep.
 
Okay, maybe you don’t feel that way, but I know I did during my first semester of grad school. I remember that some of the readings for my cognitive development class in particular felt as though they were written by people intentionally trying to confuse me.
 
Most of my advice is targeted at students in HDFS or similar social science programs, that predominantly assign journal articles and chapters. I know that other disciplines frequently assign books, and I know that journal articles in physical science disciplines are often substantially shorter than in the social sciences, so advice may differ.
 
Hopefully, you first chose your courses well, so that you are taking courses that suit your future plans. That definitely helps with motivation
 
I recommend reading some other posts on the topic, including Miriam Sweeney, and Sink or Swim in the APA GradPsych Magazine.
 
Based on these two posts, as well as my own experiences and mentoring, I recommend these strategies:

• Plan by the week: Plan out your reading across all courses a week at a time. There are going to be weeks where you have more or less for certain courses. Figuring out the ebb and flow at the start of each week is going to help you manage your time. You don’t want to approach each day thinking, what do I need to read for my family seminar tomorrow? You want a bigger picture.
• Think about the order: Don’t just read the papers in the order they appear on the syllabus for that week. When I teach my grad seminars I try to recommend an order to read things in. Even if your instructor doesn’t do the same, you can get a sense by looking at the readings. Read theory chapters/articles first, then review chapters/articles, and finally any empirical articles. If many empirical papers are assigned, group them either by date (e.g., read older/foundational papers first, newer ones second) or if the week’s readings cover a range of topics, read them by topic (e.g., read the depression articles first, then the anxiety ones).
• Read strategically: Sweeney recommends reading strategically, and I agree with that point at a general level. However, I don’t agree with the order she recommends, where she recommends reading the discussion before the methods and results. I would find that order utterly baffling. I general I think getting an overall sense of the paper by looking at titles, and then reading in order, works best for me. Don’t skip the abstract because it seems redundant – it gives you a great overview of the paper.
• Take notes: I can’t emphasize this point enough. There are many different formats by which you might take notes –annotate a PDF on your computer; open a Word file and take notes there; handwritten notes; post it notes on a print out (does anyone do this anymore?). But whatever you do, take notes as you read. If you find anything confusing, make note of it. Think about things you read that would make good discussion points, so when you go into the class discussion, you already have ideas of things to say. Although I haven’t read for courses in a long time, I can share that when I read for book club, I often think of interesting observations, but if I don’t write them down, they are utterly gone by the time we meet.
• Annotate your notes: Perhaps my most important point. I’ve written about it before, but it bears repeating. When you take notes, make sure you include annotation with citations. If you are taking notes simultaneously from multiple articles, keep annotations throughout (just jot down the source). If you are reading one article at a time, just list the article on the top of the page. But if you do any cutting and pasting, or typing/jotting word for word, put it in quotes so that your future self knows that the words are not your own. Otherwise, you may one day use these notes to write a paper/your comps/a lecture, and not remember the words aren’t your own. I’ve seen this happen. A lot.
• Read critically: Don’t just jot notes on what you read; jot notes on what you think is unclear, or incorrect, or a misinterpretation.
• Make connections: If you see connections to other readings, either from the same week or from prior weeks, definitely make note. These are the kinds of observations that instructors generally love.
• SQ3R: Azar recommends the SQ3R method: survey, question, read, recite, review. I haven’t used this method, though it seems if you have the time for it, it would be useful. I can’t see using it for 10+ readings a week, but there may be a couple key ones where using this technique proves particularly useful.
• Skimming: As a professor I can’t tell you that it’s ever okay to skim a paper instead of reading it thoroughly. But, I can say that skimming is better than not reading it at all. Don’t skim all of the papers for one class, but if you’re in a huge time crunch and need to skim one or two out of a long list, you’ll probably live. Just be strategic about which ones you skim vs. read thoroughly.
• Understanding stats: There are going to be times you don’t understand all of the statistics in an empirical article. There are certainly times I don’t understand all of the statistics in articles I read (or review for journals). It’s okay. See what you can get out of the results section, and read the discussion even more carefully than usual to make sure you understand the findings in general.
• Study groups: If you’re struggling with the content of readings, finding other grad students to discuss papers with in advance of class can be useful. It’s likely you can help each other with things the other doesn’t understand.
• Take breaks: Please take breaks. It will improve your productivity, but also your wellbeing.
  • Take breaks for your eyes every 15 minutes or so, even if it’s just 15 seconds of looking away from the computer screen. Look out a window or close your eyes for a bit. Looking at your phone or Facebook doesn’t count as an eye break.
  • Take breaks for your body every hour or so. If you’re at the lab/office, step away from your computer and go for a walk, even if it’s around the building. If you’re at home, stand up and stretch, do a down dog, figure out something to get out of the same position. I’m very bad at remembering to do so. I’ve worked with people who actually set their time for every hour to remind them to stand up and move. I will now do the same for myself, so I can practice what I preach. Done.
  • Take breaks for your brain. You can take a short break to chat to another student. Make a phone call. Go for a walk outside. Exercise. Make sure that every day you have a longer break to do something you love, so you can return to work refreshed.
• One size doesn’t fit all: Strategies that work for one student might not work well for others. Sometimes, you need some trial and error to sort out your best strategy. 

 
  What other reading strategies do you suggest to new graduate students?
 
“ How to Read for Grad Classes, Pass Classes, and Still Sleep first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on August 30, 2018.”

Wesche, R., Claxton, S. E., Lefkowitz, E. S., & van Dulmen, M. H. M. (in press). Evaluations and future plans after casual sexual experiences: Differences across partner type. Journal of Sex Research.
 
In this paper we considered multiple types of casual sexual relationships and experiences, including casual dating, friends with benefits, and booty calls/one night stands, and whether they are associated with short-term outcomes.
 
In recent years there has been growing public concern that young adults prioritize casual sex over romantic relationships. In contrast, some scholars consider casual sexual relationships as normative and an opportunity for exploration. Prior research evidence is conflicted, with some suggesting negative outcomes of casual sex, and others suggesting no outcomes or positive outcomes. In this paper, we considered a range of casual relationships in order to tease apart associations based on the type of sexual relationship.
 
Data came from two sources: a Midwestern college sample psychology pool, and Amazon’s MTurk. We considered a range of sexual behaviors: kissing, touching oral sex, sexual intercourse, and anal sex. 
 
Young adults who had sexual experiences with a friends with benefits partner tended to have more negative evaluations of the experience, and to be less oriented toward romantic relationship plans, than young adults who had sexual experiences with casual partners. Young adults who engaged in booty calls/one night stands had less positive evaluations, more negative evaluations, and were less oriented toward romantic relationship plans than young adults who had casual partners.  Plans for future casual sexual experiences did not differ by type of partner.

There was some evidence of gender differences. Specifically, the difference in positive and negative evaluations of booty calls/one night stands compared to casual sexual partners was greater for women than for men. In addition, there were differences by type of behavior, with oral/penetrative sex associated with bigger differences by type of partner than kissing/touching.
 
Overall, findings suggest that there are differences in the short-term outcomes of varied types of casual sexual experiences. That is, it is not simply that casual sex outcomes are worse than relationship sex outcomes, but that there is variation in outcomes within different types of casual sexual partners.
 
“Type of Casual Sex Partner Matters for Short-term Outcomes first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on August 28, 2018.”

People consider lots of things when writing journal article or chapter titles. Does it capture the meaning of the paper? Is it catchy enough? Is it clear? Is it succinct enough? But, there’s another issue that people may not frequently consider when writing a title, and I would argue it is the most important consideration, because unlike these other things, it isn’t specific to this paper. It sticks with you forever. And that is, how will this title look on your CV for the rest of your career?
 
It appears I’ve yet to write about strong titles, but I have written about strong first sentences. In that post I argued that your first sentence should be strong, clear, and interesting. All true of your title as well. BUT, your first sentence can actually get away with being catchier than your title, because your first sentence is contained within the manuscript, and does not appear elsewhere. It catches people’s attention in the context of the paper, but nowhere else.
 
In contrast, your title appears on your CV, in your tenure dossier, in people’s literature searches. Yes, it’s the advertisement for the paper, and thus can get people’s attention. But it’s also a reflection of you and your body of research, something that follows you forever, for better or for worse. 
 
For instance, when I was asked to write a chapter about erectile dysfunction, I asked my students if they were interested in first authoring it. When one of my students expressed interest, I asked her to think about having the title “erectile dysfunction” on her CV. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But it would be on her CV forever, and she would want to think about the kinds of institutions where she might want positions, and if that might matter at those institutions. For a lifelong sex researcher it’s probably not a big deal, but it was a consideration.
 
Another issue is cutesy titles. I support clever titles, but there is a fine line between clever and cutesy (or just silly) titles, and unfortunately, different scholars draw that line in different places. I sometimes do a literature search and come across a title that makes me cringe a little, and I confess, it can affect the way I think of the author. I won’t share examples, but I did find this Slate article about clever and gone-too-far journal article titles. So, before you finalize a clever title, ask a few other people what they think of it. If you're early career, make sure some of the people you ask are more senior than you, because they are the group of people who will evaluate your work for things like tenure. Because again, that title will be on your CV forever.  When you study a topic like sexual health, there are a lot of ways you could go clever, and a lot of ways you could go wrong, and I’ve seen both happen.
 
Perhaps I’m lucky that I’m just not very good at clever titles. I think the most I’ve done are these two:
He Said She Said: Gender Differences in Mother-Adolescent Conversations About Sexuality
and
Never been kissed: Correlates of lifetime kissing status in U.S. university students
 
I’m pretty comfortable living with both of those titles, forever.
 
Some questions to ask yourself before finalizing a clever title:

• Will it look silly on my CV 5/10 years from now?
  
• Could someone misinterpret it?
  
• Would everyone think it’s funny, or could it read as offensive?
  
• Will it fit with any job I apply for? For instance, if you look for a job at a religious institution or a government job, could it offend someone?
  

 
It may help to think of article titles like the CV version of tattoos – don’t just think about whether it’s fun in the moment, but think about whether you want to live with it for the rest of your life.
 
“Your Title Will be on Your CV Forever first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on August 23, 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.”