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Self-Esteem, Depressive Symptoms, and Adolescents' Sexual Onset
- Source :
- Social Psychology Quarterly. 67:279-295
- Publication Year :
- 2004
- Publisher :
- SAGE Publications, 2004.
-
Abstract
- We examine whether self-esteem and depressive symptoms influence sexual onset when important controls such as age, dating, race, and income are examined. Analyses are based on the first two waves of the restricted-use sample of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. We examine adolescents who reported at wave 1 that they had not had sexual intercourse. Using logistic regression models run separately for males and for females, we find that depressive symptoms, when entered simultaneously, exert a greater effect than self-esteem on sexual onset. Depressive symptoms have less effect on sexual onset for African-American girls than for white girls. Higher self-esteem is associated with greater likelihood of sexual debut at older ages for boys. Our findings suggest that although many positive benefits of self-esteem have been suggested, the conceptual and empirical link between depressive symptoms and adolescent sexual onset may be more crucial.
- Subjects :
- education.field_of_study
Longitudinal study
Social Psychology
media_common.quotation_subject
05 social sciences
Population
Self-esteem
050401 social sciences methods
Human sexuality
Sexual intercourse
0504 sociology
Personality
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
education
Psychology
Social psychology
050104 developmental & child psychology
Cohort study
Adolescent health
media_common
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 19398999 and 01902725
- Volume :
- 67
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Social Psychology Quarterly
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........19e961a12f9c3751d39028be2088a79e