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Adolescent Sexual Debut and Later Delinquency

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Abstract

Does sexual debut (i.e., experiencing sexual intercourse for the first time) increase the risks of participating in later delinquent behavior? Does this risk increase if adolescents experience early sexual debut relative to the timing experienced by one’s peers? Although many factors have been linked to sexual debut, little research has examined whether sexual initiation is linked to later behavioral outcomes. Using data on adolescents participating in three waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N=7,297), we examine the interconnections between sexual debut and later delinquency. In addition, we pay particular attention to the role of timing of sexual debut. We find that experiencing sexual debut is associated with delinquency one year later. In addition, those adolescents who experience early sexual debut relative to their peers are at higher risk of experiencing delinquency compared to those who debut on-time; adolescents who experience late sexual debut are the least likely to participate in delinquency. Moreover, the protective effect of late sexual debut appears to persist for several years. Findings are interpreted by drawing on developmental theory and life course research.

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Notes

  1. By sexual debut we refer to transitioning from virgin to non-virgin status based on self-reported information on the experience of sexual intercourse.

  2. Supplementary analyses examined whether and how our sample of respondents (restricted to those respondents who participated in all three waves of in-home surveys) differs from a sample of Wave I respondents. Findings of the attrition analyses indicate that background demographic and behavioral characteristics (e.g., delinquency, substance use) of our sample are not significantly different from a sample of respondents interviewed at Wave I. However, our restricted sample does contain slightly fewer Non-White youth (44% compared to 47%).

  3. We dealt with missing data in a number of ways. If respondents failed to provide information on the timing of sexual initiation at Wave II we pulled this information from their Wave III interview (date of sexual imitation was collected at all three waves of interviews). While missing data on our other variables was relatively rare (each measure was missing less than 4% of responses) we used multiple imputation to fill in missing values (Allison, 2001). We also ran supplementary analyses where we employed case-wise deletion (where we lost approximately 900 cases) and found similar patterns of results.

  4. We choose to use one standard deviation as our gauge of early and late sexual debut since this placed approximately 40% of our sample in one of the two categories. However, in supplementary analyses we examined whether using two standard deviations above or below the mean as a point of comparison changed our pattern of findings. Overall, these analyses indicated that using a more restricted definition of early- and late-debut produced substantively similar results.

  5. Since not every parent was given the parent questionnaire, there was substantial missing data on that variable (N=3,218), as compared to the number of missing cases in the in-home survey (N=95). Rather than use only the parent questionnaire for this variable, is was more advantageous to use the respondent’s report of the parent’s highest education as the primary source of that information.

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Acknowledgments

This research uses data from Add Health, a program project designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris, and funded by a grant P01-HD31921 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Persons interested in obtaining data files from Add Health should contact Add Health, Carolina Population Center, 123 W. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2524 (addhealth@unc.edu).

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  1. Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University, 300 Bricker Hall, 190 N. Oval Mall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    Stacy Armour & Dana L. Haynie

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  1. Stacy Armour
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  2. Dana L. Haynie
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Correspondence to Dana L. Haynie.

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Armour, S., Haynie, D.L. Adolescent Sexual Debut and Later Delinquency. J Youth Adolescence 36, 141–152 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-006-9128-4

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