Adolescent Intimate Heterosexual Relationships: Measurement Issues

Abstract

During adolescence, individuals develop increased ability to have emotionally and physically intimate relationships. The type of intimate relationship will make a difference as to whether the adolescent engages in protective behaviors or avoids risky behaviors. However, in reviewing the literature on the association of relationship type and sexual risk and protective behaviors, four methodological challenges were noted. These challenges limit our understanding of the impact of relationship type. These four challenges are: a) inconsistent definitional frameworks; b) lack of adolescent voices; c) lack of consideration of gender; and d) poor differentiation between individual and relationship risk. These issues direct the course of future work in this area and are necessary to advance the field of adolescent sexual health, particularly with regard to the development and testing of appropriate interventions designed to reduce untoward outcomes of adolescent sexuality.

Mixed model and estimating equation approaches for zero inflation in clustered binary response data with application to a dating violence study

“…The filter question was not included because the study investigators felt that it was an unreliable question to ask. Relationships between teenagers today cannot easily be characterized, and the investigators felt that explicitly asking this question may limit important responses about violence [Short et al (2013)]. There are other cases where the susceptible population cannot be ascertained accurately.…”

Sexual Partner Types and Incident HIV Infection Among Rural South African Adolescent Girls and Young Women Enrolled in HPTN 068: A Latent Class Analysis

“…Furthermore, risk scores often incorporate both individual (eg, age and number of sexual partners) and partner factors (eg, partner age and partner concurrency), limiting their ability to discern different types of sexual partners for interventions tailored to a particular partner context. Finally, commonly used partner labels are not explicitly tied to specific partner risk factors 4,9,16 and may be interpreted and applied variably. [17][18][19][20] Latent class analysis (LCA) is a person-centered, datadriven approach that can be used to identify patterns of correlated risk factors and classify people based on these patterns.…”

Adolescents Negotiating Romantic Relationships in a Culturally Diverse, Urban Community

“…In a U.S.-based study, Short, Catallozzi, Breitkopf, Auslander, and Rosenthal (2011) also reported that adolescent relationships are common, but indicated that several important elements are often ignored in current studies on teen intimacy, including the voices of the adolescents themselves, and the effect of gender on how intimate opposite-sex relationships evolve. In light of the above concerns the current study adds to the scholarly literature by including the voices of teenage boys and girls regarding their views on romantic relationships.…”