Conducting adolescent sexuality research in schools: lessons learned.

PIP: Research that analyzes school-based health education programs usually includes the intervention's strategies, the instrument used to gauge its effectiveness, the sample sizes, and results. Issues related to recruiting and retaining of participants are rarely studied. Using school-based personnel as allies has been suggested in previous studies, but no studies have reported the outcome of this strategy when the research involves the topic of sexuality education. In this paper, the authors describe their experience using such a strategy in a longitudinal evaluation of Reducing the Risk curriculum, using 1141 adolescents within the 12 intervention schools in Maine in order to explore its impact on adolescent attitudes and behavior. The evaluation explored the supports and barriers to adopting curricula, the extent to which teachers implemented them and the types of modifications they made. Overall, the authors concluded that modifying a curriculum during implementation can reduce its effectiveness.^ieng

The internal consistency of the child abuse potential inventory with adolescent mothers.

In this study, 105 adolescents completed the Child Abuse Potential Inventory (CAP) at an average of 2 months postpartum. The purpose was to assess the reliability (internal consistency) of the CAP with adolescent mothers. The second purpose was to begin to establish a line of inquiry that examines the value of using the CAP with this population. The results showed that the alpha reliabilities were low for the CAP abuse scale (0.65) and low to moderate for its six subscales (range 0.59-0.74). The conclusion was drawn that further research is needed to understand the psychometric properties of the CAP with adolescent mothers.

Intraindividual variation among pregnant adolescents: a pilot study and conceptual discussion.

There is little empirical research or theory on intraindividual variation (mood changes) during adolescence, and virtually no research on intraindividual variation during adolescent pregnancy. This pilot study illustrates the need for research on pregnant adolescents' moods and their impact on survey reliability and validity. Fourteen adolescents kept diaries for six consecutive weeks during their pregnancies. The diary entries were analyzed for affective tone, emotional lability, and contextuality. A conceptual discussion is presented that questions the psychometric properties of data gathered using one time, self-report measures with pregnant adolescents because of their fluctuating mood states. Hypotheses are generated for future testing in this area and a call is made for a new area of research on intraindividual tension during adolescent pregnancy.

PIP: A review of the diary entries over a six-week period of 14 pregnant adolescents suggested that the emotional lability of this population may render self-report data collected at a single point in time unreliable. The subjects (average age, 16 years; mean gestational age, 5.1 months) were instructed to record weekly entries regarding their feelings about themselves, their mothers, and the baby's father. The affective tone associated with each of these three topics was rated for each week on a scale of 1 (very negative) to 5 (very positive). The means were 3.26, 2.71, and 2.38 for mother, baby's father, and self, respectively. Overall, self feelings remained consistently negative, while positive feelings about mothers and neutral feelings about the father fluctuated. A lack of baseline data makes it impossible to determine whether the intraindividual variability observed reflects the state of being pregnant or more enduring personality traits. The research implications of this study are that special consideration should be given to reliability coefficients when instruments are administered to pregnant women. Tests can be given at multiple points in time, or subjects should be homogeneous in terms of gestational age. Emotional lability should further be addressed by health care professionals involved with pregnant adolescents, given the possibility that critical decisions may be made in a transient depressed or elevated mood state.

Assessing what high risk young children know about drugs: verbal versus pictorial methods.

Very young children are generally not targeted for drug education efforts for two basic reasons. First, it is generally assumed that young children are not cognitively ready to learn about specific drugs through systematic drug prevention efforts. And second, it is difficult to measure pre- and posttest changes on the part of young children if drug education intervention is instituted. This study involved measuring what children three to eight years old learned from systematic drug education over the course of eight months. Two assessment methods were compared: pictorial and verbal interviews. The posttest results revealed that the children who received the intervention knew significantly more about several drugs than a matched comparison group. Both methods were useful in providing a comprehensive view of what the children knew about alcohol and other drugs.