Adolescent Risk Taking: Comparing across a Decade?

Frank Mott, Ohio State University
Lori Kowaleski-Jones, University of Utah

In this research, we utilize an adolescent life cycle perspective to explore the extent to which teenage sexual and reproductive behaviors have common attitudinal and behavioral origins. This paper is an extension of our prior work where we examined high risk teens in 1994. In particular, we contrast results for two distinctly different cohorts of adolescents, one born to adolescent mothers, and one born to mothers who were at more mainstream childbearing ages. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), we employ partial correlational and logit techniques to compare the sexual behavior of teens surveyed in 1994 to teens surveyed in 2004. Results provide important comparative insights on changing sexual and reproductive behavior among an important national sample of American teenagers.