Current Research at ISERP
Healthy Adolescent Relationships: Temporal Dynamics, Normative Scripts, and the Transition to Sex
by Peter Bearman (Sociology) and Hannah Brückner (Yale)
The project directly considers three important public health concerns: adolescent pregnancy, adolescent STD acquisition, and health adolescent relationship. The investigators focus on the dynamics underlying relationship formation, the transition to first sex, the dynamics underlying the transition to sexual activity within relationships, and the consequences of those dynamics. Their interest rests on developing new ways to understand adolescent sexual behavior and relationships so as to shape interventions and public policies designed to enhance adolescent health. From a health policy perspective, the relevant background is obvious: despite recent declines, the United States, in comparison to other Western industrialized nations, remains an outlier with respect to both adolescent pregnancy and STD acquisition. The research will proceed in two stages. The first stage involves understanding the dynamics of relationship formation; completing preliminary work on the determinants of the transition to sex in adolescent relationships that considers relationships as embedded within larger social (peer, family, school, network) structures; model relationship unfolding processes; analyze partnership dynamics; and consider multiple levels of influence on individuals and partnership simultaneously. The second stage of the project will develop a sequence based model of relationship dynamics, focusing on the temporal ordering of events as they unfold within relationships, to understand the role that normative scripts play in such unfolding processes, and to assess the health consequences of distance between observed and ideal relationships. The findings from this project should lead scholars and policymakers to fundamentally re-evaluate the traditional frameworks in which adolescent sexual behavior is understood. It should lead to the development of more effective intervention programs and curricula. This is a two-year project that will result in a major book on adolescent sexual behavior, multiple articles for academic journals, and sustained engagement with the public sphere in order to shape discourse on social policy relevant to adolescent and young adult health, broadly construed.
See Also
Funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation »
