Abstract
Purpose
Violent victimization is concentrated in adolescence and is disruptive to both the timing and sequencing of key life course transitions that occur during this developmental stage. Drawing on recent work establishing the interpersonal consequences of youth victimization, we examined the effect of violent victimization on adolescents’ timing of sexual debut and involvement in additional sexual risk behaviors (multiple sexual partnering and inconsistent contraceptive use).
Methods
This study relied on secondary data analysis of 10,070 youth from four waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). To predict sexual debut and subsequent sexual risk-taking, analyses were limited to youth not yet sexually active at their wave I interview.
Results
Findings from Cox proportional hazards models, negative binomial regression, and repeated measures ordinal logistic regression showed that adolescent victims of violence initiated sex sooner than non-victims and accumulated more sexual partners, but patterns varied by age at victimization. Youth victimized in late adolescence displayed an accelerated trajectory of sexual activity while youth victimized in early adolescence were less likely to debut or engage in other sexual risk behaviors (although younger victims were more likely to engage in other deviant activities).
Conclusion
Sexual activity is a normative part of adolescent development, yet this study finds that violent victimization may disrupt the timing of this life course task, exacerbating deviant risk-taking and undermining youths’ subsequent well-being. This study also highlights the importance of life course criminology’s attention to timing in lives, given that the consequences of victimization varied by the age when it occurred.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
We used the wave III or wave IV reports of age at debut over any wave II reports because of inconsistency in measurement. Specifically, at wave II, respondents were asked about debut timing following questions concerning sexual touching and a comparison of reports between waves II and III suggests that a sizeable number of respondents may have conflated sexual intercourse and sexual touching as a result. However, for the 168 respondents who dropped out of the panel after wave II but who experienced sexual debut by wave II, we had to rely on wave II reports. Preliminary analyses excluding these respondents (not shown) did not differ in substantive ways from the findings including them presented here.
A limitation is that respondents were not asked the timing of first victimization. This is less a methodological problem for the early adolescent subsample because they were just entering the period of increased victimization risk. It poses a challenge, however, for the late adolescent subsample because it may contain youth first victimized during late adolescence and those victimized in both early and late adolescence. This conflation should work against detecting significant effects between YVV in early and late adolescence, and thus, our findings should be somewhat conservative.
As Allison [7] has noted, multiple imputation routines are ill-equipped to deal with complex event-timing data and indeed an average of 84 respondents (1.09%) in each imputed dataset had implausible values for age at first sex that resulted in negative time to debut; we set age at first sex for these respondents to be equal to age at wave I.
Analyses performed on unimputed data produced substantively similar findings.
References
Agnew, R. (1992). Foundation for a general strain theory of crime and delinquency. Criminology, 30, 47–87.
Agnew, R. (1997). Stability and change over the life course: a strain theory explanation. In T. P. Thornberry (Ed.), Developmental theories of crime and delinquency (pp. 101–132). New Brunswick: Transaction.
Agnew, R. (2001). Building on the foundation of general strain theory: specifying the types of strain most likely to lead to crime and delinquency. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 38, 319–361.
Agnew, R., Scheuerman, H., Grosholz, J., Isom, D., Watson, L., & Thaxton, S. (2011). Does victimization reduce self-control? A longitudinal analysis. Journal of Criminal Justice, 39, 169–174.
Akers, R. L. (2006 [1994]). A social learning theory of crime. In F. Cullen & R. Agnew (Eds.), Criminological theory: past to present (pp. 134–146). Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Company.
Allison, P. D. (1984). Event history analysis: regression for longitudinal event data. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Allison, P. D. (2010). Survival analysis. In G. R. Hancock & R. O. Mueller (Eds.), The reviewer’s guide to quantitative methods in the social sciences (pp. 413–425). New York: Routledge.
Anderson, E. (1999). Code of the street: decency, violence, and moral life of the inner city. New York: Norton.
Arbeau, K. J., Galambos, N. L., & Jansson, S. M. (2007). Dating, sex, and substance use as correlates of adolescents’ subjective experience of age. Journal of Adolescence, 30, 435–447.
Armour, S., & Haynie, D. L. (2007). Adolescent sexual debut and later delinquency. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 36, 141–152.
Averdijk, M., Malti, T., Eisner, M., Ribeaud, D., & Farrington, D. P. (2016). A vicious cycle of peer victimization? Problem behavior mediates stability in peer victimization over time. Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology, 2, 162–181.
Barbaro, N., & Shackelford, T. K. (2016). Environmental unpredictability in childhood is associated with anxious romantic attachment and intimate partner violence perpetration. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 1-30.
Bearman, P. S., & Moody, J. (2004). Suicide and friendships among American adolescents. American Journal of Public Health, 94, 89–95.
Beckley, A. L., Caspi, A., Arseneault, L., Barnes, J. C., Fisher, H. L., Harrington, H., et al. (2018). The developmental nature of the victim-offender overlap. Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology, 4, 24–49.
Benedini, K. M., & Fagan, A. A. (2018). A life-course developmental analysis of the cycle of violence. Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology, 4, 1–23.
Berg, M. T., Stewart, E. A., Schreck, C. J., & Simons, R. L. (2012). The victim–offender overlap in context: examining the role of neighborhood street culture. Criminology, 50, 359–390.
Boivin, M., Hymel, S., & Hodges, E. V. E. (2001). Toward a process view of peer rejection and harassment. In J. Juvonen & S. Graham (Eds.), Harassment in school: the plight of the vulnerable and victimized (pp. 265–289). New York: The Guilford Press.
Brady, S. S., & Donenberg, G. R. (2006). Mechanisms linking violence exposure to health risk behavior in adolescence: motivation to cope and sensation seeking. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 45, 673–680.
Browning, C., & Olinger-Wilborn, M. (2003). Neighborhood structure, social organization, and number of short-term sexual partnerships. Journal of Marriage and Family, 65, 730–745.
Cauffman, E., Cavanagh, C., Donley, S., & Thomas, A. G. (2016). A developmental perspective on adolescent risk-taking and criminal behavior. In A. R. Piquero (Ed.), The handbook of criminological theory (pp. 100–120). Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell.
Chen, B.-B. (2017). Insecure attachment, resource control, and unrestricted sociosexuality: from a life history perspective. Personality and Individual Differences, 105, 213–217.
Childs, K. K., Davidson, M., Potter, R. H., & Rosky, J. W. (2016). Exploring the structure of adolescent problem behaviors and the associated adult outcomes. Deviant Behavior, 37, 95–113.
Clay-Warner, J., Bunch, J. M., & McMahon-Howard, J. (2016). Differential vulnerability: disentangling the effects of state dependence and population heterogeneity on repeat victimization. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 43, 1406–1429.
Collins, W. A. (2003). More than myth: the developmental significance of romantic relationships during adolescence. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 13, 1–24.
Connolly, J., Nguyen, H. N. T., Pepler, D., Craig, W., & Jiang, D. (2013). Developmental trajectories of romantic stages and associations with problem behaviours during adolescence. Journal of Adolescence, 36, 1013–1024.
Cuffee, J. J., Hallfors, D. D., & Waller, M. W. (2007). Racial and gender differences in adolescent sexual attitudes and longitudinal associations with coital debut. Journal of Adolescent Health, 41, 19–26.
Davis, D., Shaver, P. R., & Vernon, M. L. (2004). Attachment style and subjective motivations for sex. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1076–1090.
Downey, G., Bonica, C., & Rincon, C. (1999). Rejection sensitivity and adolescent romantic relationships. In W. Furman, B. Brown, & C. Feiring (Eds.), The development of romantic relationships in adolescence (pp. 148–174). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Elder, G. H., Jr. (1994). Time, human agency, and social change: perspectives on the life course. Social Psychology Quarterly, 57, 4–15.
Elder, G. H., Jr. (1998). The life course as developmental theory. Child Development, 69, 1–12.
Elwert, F., & Winship, C. (2014). Endogenous selection bias: the problem of conditioning on a collider variable. Annual Review of Sociology, 40, 31–53.
Fang, X., & Corso, P. S. (2007). Child maltreatment, youth violence, and intimate partner violence: developmental relationships. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 33, 281–290.
Finkelhor, D. (2007). Developmental victimology: the comprehensive study of childhood victimizations. In R. C. Davis, A. J. Lurigio, & S. Herman (Eds.), Victim of crime (3rd Edition ed., pp. 9–34). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc..
Finkelhor, D., Turner, H. A., Shattuck, A., & Hamby, S. L. (2013). Violence, crime, and abuse exposure in a national sample of children and youth: an update. JAMA Pediatrics, 167, 614–621.
Fortenberry, J. D. (2013). Puberty and adolescent sexuality. Hormones and Behavior, 64, 280–287.
Gottfredson, M. R., & Hirschi, T. (1990). A general theory of crime. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Hagan, J. (1991). Destiny and drift: subcultural preferences, status attainments, and the risks and rewards of youth. American Sociological Review, 56, 567–582.
Hagan, J., & Foster, H. (2001). Youth violence and the end of adolescence. American Sociological Review, 66, 874–899.
Halpern, C. T., Spriggs, A. L., Martin, S. L., & Kupper, L. L. (2009). Patterns of intimate partner violence victimization from adolescence to young adulthood in a nationally representative sample. Journal of Adolescent Health, 45, 508–516.
Harding, D. J. (2007). Cultural context, sexual behavior, and romantic relationships in disadvantaged neighborhoods. American Sociological Review, 72, 341–364.
Harper, A. J. (2017). Virginal status and adolescent delinquency: the birds and the bees, deviance, and teens. Deviant Behavior, 38, 1340–1351.
Harris, K. M. (2005). Design features of add health. Chapel Hill, NC: Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina.
Haynie, D. L., Petts, R. J., Maimon, D., & Piquero, A. R. (2009). Exposure to violence in adolescence and precocious role exits. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 38, 269–286.
Haynie, D. L., & Piquero, A. R. (2006). Pubertal development and physical victimization in adolescence. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 43, 3–35.
Hoffman, J. P. (2010). A life-course perspective on stress, delinquency, and young adult crime. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 35, 105–120.
Holt, M. K., Matjasko, J. L., Espelage, D., Reid, G., & Koenig, B. (2013). Sexual risk taking and bullying among adolescents. Pediatrics, 132, e1481–e1487.
Hope, T. L., & Chapple, C. L. (2004). Maternal characteristics, parenting, and adolescent sexual behavior: the role of self-control. Deviant Behavior, 26, 25–45.
Humphrey, T., & Van Brunschot, E. G. (2018). Accumulating (dis)advantage: do social bonds mediate the relationship between multiple childhood adversities and persistent offending? Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology, 4, 297–321.
Ireland, T. O., Smith, C. A., & Thornberry, T. P. (2002). Developmental issues in the impact of child maltreatment on later delinquency and drug use. Criminology, 40, 359–400.
Isakson, K., & Jarvis, P. (1999). The adjustment of adolescents during the transition into high school: a short-term longitudinal study. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 28, 1–26.
Ivanova, K., Veenstra, R., & Mills, M. (2012). Who dates? The effects of temperament, puberty, and parenting on early adolescent experience with dating: the trails study. Journal of Early Adolescence, 32, 340–363.
Jessor, R. (2016). The origins and development of problem behavior theory: the collected works of Richard Jessor. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.
Jessor, R., & Jessor, S. L. (1977). Problem behavior and psychosocial development: a longitudinal study of youth. New York, New York: Academic Press.
Kotchick, B. A., Shaffer, A., Miller, K. S., & Forehand, R. (2001). Adolescent sexual risk behavior: A multi-system perspective. Clinical Psychology Review, 21, 493–519.
Kuhl, D. C., Warner, D. F., & Warner, T. D. (2015). Intimate partner violence risk among victims of youth violence: are early unions bad, beneficial, or benign? Criminology, 53, 427–456.
Kuhl, D. C., Warner, D. F., & Wilczak, A. (2012). Adolescent violent victimization and precocious union formation. Criminology, 50, 1089–1127.
Latzman, R. D., & Swisher, R. R. (2005). The interactive relationship among adolescent violence, street violence, and depression. Journal of Community Psychology, 33, 355–371.
Lauritsen, J. L., & Laub, J. H. (2007). Understanding the link between victimization and offending: new reflections on an old idea. In M. Hough & M. G. Maxfield (Eds.), Surveying crime in the 21st century: Commemorating the 25th Anniversary of the British Crime Survey (pp. 55–75). Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press.
Loftus, J., Kelly, B. C., & Mustillo, S. A. (2013). Predictors of entry into age-discordant relationships among adolescent girls. Deviant Behavior, 34, 513–533.
Longmore, M. A., Manning, W. D., & Giordano, P. C. (2001). Preadolescent parenting strategies and teens’ dating and sexual initiation: a longitudinal analysis. Journal of Marriage and Family, 63, 322–335.
Luster, T., & Small, S. A. (1994). Factors associated with sexual risk-taking behaviors among adolescents. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 56, 622–632.
Macmillan, R. (2001). Violence and the life course: the consequences of victimization for personal and social development. Annual Review of Sociology, 27, 1–22.
Margolin, G., & Gordis, E. B. (2000). The effects of family and community violence on children. Annual Review of Psychology, 51, 445–479.
Markham, C. M., Lormand, D., Gloppen, K. M., Peskin, M. F., Flores, B., Low, B., & House, L. D. (2010). Connectedness as a predictor of sexual and reproductive health outcomes for youth. Journal of Adolescent Health, 46, S23–S41.
Matson, P. A., Chung, S.-E., & Ellen, J. M. (2014). Perceived neighborhood partner availability, partner selection, and risk for sexually transmitted infections within a cohort of adolescent females. Journal of Adolescent Health, 55, 122–127.
McCarthy, B., & Casey, T. (2008). Love, sex, and crime: adolescent romantic relationships and offending. American Sociological Review, 73, 944–969.
McGloin, J. M., & O’Neill Shermer, L. (2009). Self-control and deviant peer network structure. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 46, 35–72.
Meier, A., Hull, K. E., & Ortyl, T. A. (2009). Young adult relationship values at the intersection of gender and sexuality. Journal of Marriage and Family, 71, 510–525.
Miller, B. C. (2002). Family influences on adolescent sexual and contraceptive behavior. Journal of Sex Research, 39, 22–26.
Mirowsky, J. (2013). Analyzing associations between mental health and social circumstances. In C. S. Aneshensel, J. C. Phelan, & A. Bierman (Eds.), Handbook of the sociology of mental health (pp. 146–165). Dordrecht: Springer.
Monahan, K. C., King, K. M., Shulman, E. P., Cauffman, E., & Chassin, L. (2015). The effects of violence exposure on the development of impulse control and future orientation across adolescence and early adulthood: time-specific and generalized effects in a sample of juvenile offenders. Development and Psychopathology, 27, 1267–1283.
Mrug, S., Borch, C., & Cillessen, A. H. N. (2011). Other-sex friendships in late adolescence: risky associations for substance use and sexual debut? Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 40, 875–888.
Na, C. (2016). The consequences of fatherhood transition among disadvantaged male offenders: does timing matter. Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology, 2, 182–208.
Negriff, S., Susman, E. J., & Trickett, P. K. (2011). The developmental pathway from pubertal timing to delinquency and sexual activity from early to late adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 40, 1343–1356.
Osgood, D. W. (2012). Some future trajectories for life course criminology. In R. Loeber & B. C. Welsh (Eds.), The future of criminology (pp. 3–10). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Ousey, G. C., Wilcox, P., & Schreck, C. J. (2015). Violent victimization, confluence of risks and the nature of criminal behavior: testing main and interactive effects from Agnew’s extension of general strain theory. Journal of Criminal Justice, 43, 164–173.
Overbeek, G., Zeevalkink, H., Vermulst, A. D., & Scholte, R. H. J. (2010). Peer victimization, self-esteem, and ego resilience types in adolescents: a prospective analysis of person-context interactions. Social Development, 19, 270–284.
Raffaelli, M., & Crockett, L. J. (2003). Sexual risk taking in adolescence: the role of self-regulation and attraction to risk. Developmental Psychology, 39, 1036–1046.
Rapoza, K. A., & Baker, A. T. (2008). Attachment styles, alcohol, and childhood experiences of abuse: an analysis of physical violence in dating couples. Violence and Victims, 23, 52–65.
Ritchwood, T. D., Ford, H., DeCoster, J., Sutton, M., & Lochman, J. E. (2015). Risky sexual behavior and substance use among adolescents: a meta-analysis. Children and Youth Services Review, 52, 74–88.
Robinson, M. L., Holmbeck, G. N., & Paikoff, R. (2007). Self-esteem enhancing reasons for having sex and the sexual behaviors of African American adolescents. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 36, 453–464.
Roche, K. M., & Leventhal, T. (2009). Beyond neighborhood poverty: family management, neighborhood disorder, and adolescents’ early sexual onset. Journal of Family Psychology, 23, 819–827.
Schreck, C. J., Berg, M. T., Ousey, G. C., Stewart, E. A., & Miller, J. M. (2017). Does the nature of the victimization-offending association fluctuate over the life course? An examination of adolescence and early adulthood. Crime & Delinquency, 63, 786–813.
Schreck, C. J., Stewart, E. A., & Osgood, D. W. (2008). A reappraisal of the overlap of violent offenders and victims. Criminology, 46, 871–906.
Schuster, R. M., Mermelstein, R., & Wakschlag, L. (2013). Gender-specific relationships between depressive symptoms, marijuana use, parental communication and risky sexual behavior in adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 42, 1194–1209.
Simons, L. G., Burt, C. H., & Peterson, F. R. (2009). The effect of religion on risky sexual behavior among college students. Deviant Behavior, 30, 467–485.
Simons, R. L., & Barr, A. B. (2014). Shifting perspectives: cognitive changes mediate the impact of romantic relationships on desistance from crime. Justice Quarterly, 31, 793–821.
Simons, R. L., & Burt, C. H. (2011). Learning to be bad: adverse social conditions, social schemas, and crime. Criminology, 49, 553–598.
Simons, R. L., Simons, L. G., Lei, M. K., & Landor, A. M. (2012). Relational schemas, hostile romantic relationships, and beliefs about marriage among young African American adults. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 29, 77–101.
Stolzenberg, R. M., & Relles, D. A. (1997). Tool for intuition about sample selection bias and its correction. American Sociological Review, 26, 494–507.
Tapert, S. F., Aarons, G. A., Sedlar, G. R., & Brown, S. A. (2001). Adolescent substance use and sexual risk-taking behavior. Journal of Adolescent Health, 28, 181–189.
Thomas, G., Reifman, A., Barnes, G. M., & Farrell, M. P. (2000). Delayed onset of drunkenness as a protective factor for adolescent alcohol misuse and sexual risk taking: a longitudinal study. Deviant Behavior, 21, 181–209.
Thornberry, T. P., Ireland, T. O., & Smith, C. A. (2001). The importance of timing: the varying impact of childhood and adolescent maltreatment on multiple problem outcomes. Development and Psychopathology, 13, 957–979.
Truman, J., Langton, L., & Planty, M. (2013). Criminal victimization, 2012. Retrieved from
Turanovic, J. J. (2018). Toward a life course theory of victimization. In S. H. Decker & K. A. Wright (Eds.), Criminology and public policy (2nd ed., pp. 85–103). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Turner, H. A., Finkelhor, D., & Ormrod, R. (2006). The effect of lifetime victimization on the mental health of children and adolescents. Social Science and Medicine, 62, 13–27.
Upchurch, D. M., Aneshensel, C. S., Mudgal, J., & McNeely, C. S. (2001). Sociocultural contexts of time to first sex among Hispanic adolescents. Journal of Marriage and Family, 63, 1158–1169.
Warner, T. D., Giordano, P. C., Manning, W. D., & Longmore, M. A. (2011). Everybody’s doin’ it (right?): neighborhood norms and sexual activity in adolescence. Social Science Research, 40, 1676–1690.
Warner, T. D., & Swisher, R. R. (2014). The effect of direct and indirect exposure to violence on youth survival expectations. Journal of Adolescent Health, 55, 817–822.
Warner, T. D., Warner, D. F., & Kuhl, D. C. (2017). Cut to the quick: the consequences of youth violent victimization for the timing of dating debut and first union formation. American Sociological Review, 82, 1241–1271.
White, I. R., Royston, P., & Wood, A. M. (2011). Multiple imputation using chained equations: issues and guidance for practice. Statistics in Medicine, 30, 377–399.
Widman, L., Choukas-Bradley, S., Helms, S. W., & Prinstein, M. J. (2016). Adolescent susceptibility to peer influence in sexual situations. Journal of Adolescent Health, 58, 323–329.
Wilson, H. W., Woods, B. A., Emerson, E., & Donenberg, G. R. (2012). Patterns of violence exposure and sexual risk in low-income, urban African American girls. Psychology of Violence, 2, 194–207.
Wojciechowski, T. W. (2018). Victimization recency, development of anger, and violent offending in early adulthood: a developmental test of general strain theory. Deviant Behavior, 1–16.
Yarkovsky, N., & Timmons Fritz, P. A. (2014). Attachment style, early sexual intercourse, and dating aggression victimization. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 29, 279–298.
Zimmer-Gembeck, M. J., & Helfand, M. (2008). Ten years of longitudinal research on u.S. adolescent sexual behavior: developmental correlates of sexual intercourse, and the importance of age, gender and ethnic background. Developmental Review, 28, 153–224.
Acknowledgments
This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by Grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from Grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.
Funding
None.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Disclaimer
No direct support was received from Grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Warner, T.D., Warner, D.F. Precocious and Problematic? The Consequences of Youth Violent Victimization for Adolescent Sexual Behavior. J Dev Life Course Criminology 5, 554–586 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40865-019-00122-7
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40865-019-00122-7