Abstract
Positive risks benefit adolescent development without posing the same public safety concerns as negative risks, but little is understood about the psychological characteristics of positive risk taking. This study explored the shared and unique correlates of positive and negative risk taking in 223 adolescents (48% female) ages 16–20 years (M = 18.1; SD = 0.81). Positive and negative risk taking were both associated with higher sensation seeking. Unlike negative risk taking, positive risk taking was not associated with impulsivity or risk taking on experimental tasks. Further, positive risk taking was associated with lower reward sensitivity, higher punishment sensitivity, and greater school engagement than negative risk taking. The findings offer new insights for prevailing models of adolescent risk behavior and suggest positive risk taking may be particularly beneficial in the school context.
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Notes
The positive risk taking scale was administered for the first time during the ninth wave of data collection. During this wave, the scale was only administered in the United States sample.
One item from the original eight-item Benthin scale (“vandalism”) was omitted due to low participant endorsement (<5%).
BART data from two participants were excluded due to technical errors that resulted in unusable data.
Various technical difficulties with the Stoplight task resulted in the loss or exclusion of data for 54 subjects. Although data are assumed to be missing at random, results from these analyses should be interpreted with caution.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Drs. Jason Chein and Thomas Olino for their assistance with the development of the positive risk scale and conceptual design of this study. Thanks also to the Parenting Across Cultures Study (PI: Dr. Jennifer Lansford) working group for their assistance in data acquisition.
Authors’ Contributions
ND conceived of the study, participated in its design, performed the statistical analyses, participated in interpretation of the data, and drafted the manuscript; LS helped conceive of the study, participated in its design, participated in the interpretation of the data, and helped draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding
The writing of this article was supported, in part, by a postdoctoral fellowship provided by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Development [T32-HD07376] through the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to Natasha Duell and by an award provided by the Klaus J. Jacobs Foundation to Laurence Steinberg.
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This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the internal review board of Duke University (IRB approval 2032).
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Appendices
Appendix A
Positive and Negative Risk Taking Scale
Below are the positive and negative risk taking questionnaire items administered to participants in this study. Items 1–14 are from the positive risk taking scale. Items 15–22 are negative risk items from the Benthin Risk Perception Scale. Items 23–28 are negative risk items added for the purposes of this study. This appendix begins with the prompt and response options used in this study. Note that the following positive risk taking items were omitted from the final analyses: (1) Tried out for a team or auditioned for a play when you were not sure you would be picked; (3) Told someone the truth, even if they did not want to hear it; (5) Ran for a leadership role in school or in some other organization when you were not sure you would be picked; (6) Asked someone new on a date when you thought they might say no.
For descriptive purposes, Fig. 2 illustrates the frequency of endorsement across participant age for each of the positive and negative risk items used in the final analyses.
Prompt: Here is a list of different things you may have done at some time in the past. For each one, please indicate whether you have ever done it, and, if so, how many times you have done it in the past 6 months.
Question items and response options:
Have you ever…
(0) No (1) Yes
…How many times have you engaged in this activity during the last 6 months?
(0) None (1) Once or twice (2) 3–5 times (3) More than 5 times
Items
-
1.
Tried out for a team or auditioned for a play when you were not sure you would be picked?
-
2.
Joined a new club or activity when you were not sure you would like it?
-
3.
Told someone the truth, even if they did not want to hear it?
-
4.
Tried a new food you thought you might not like?
-
5.
Ran for a leadership role in school or in some other organization when you were not sure you would be picked?
-
6.
Asked someone new on a date when you thought the person may say no?
-
7.
Taken a class in a subject you knew nothing about or that seemed challenging?
-
8.
Tried a new hairstyle or outfit that you were not sure others would like?
-
9.
Gone to a party or social event where you did not know very many people and thought you might not have anyone to talk with?
-
10.
Told a secret or shared something personal about yourself to someone?
-
11.
Stood up for what you believe is right, even though you thought someone might disagree with you?
-
12.
Started a friendship with someone new when you were not sure how your other friends would react?
-
13.
Tried a new sport or played a sport you are not good at where you might have embarrassed yourself?
-
14.
Spent time with a new group of people when you were not sure you would fit in?
-
15.
Drank alcohol
-
16.
Rode in a car with an intoxicated (drunk) driver
-
17.
Had unprotected sex
-
18.
Smoked cigarettes
-
19.
Stolen from a store
-
20.
Went into a dangerous part of town
-
21.
Gotten into a physical fight
-
22.
Threatened or injured someone with a weapon
-
23.
Looked at your phone while driving a car instead of paying attention to the road?
-
24.
Cheated on a homework assignment or exam even though you knew you would get in trouble if you were caught?
-
25.
Decided to skip class even though you could get in trouble and fall behind on your schoolwork?
-
26.
Snuck out of your house without telling your parents where you were going?
-
27.
Sent sexy messages or pictures to someone?
-
28.
Driven faster than the legal speed limit?
Percent of sample endorsing engagement in positive and negative risks over the past 6 months, organized by age group
Appendix B
Results from Scale Development Analyses for the Positive Risk Taking Scale
An exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the 14 positive risk taking items administered in this study. Table 6 provides correlations among the 14 original items included in the positive risk taking questionnaire. Table 7 provides model fit statistics from the exploratory factor analysis of the positive risk items, which ultimately yielded a 10-item, single-factor scale. For a discussion of model fit, see Kline 2011 (pp. 193–209).
To further test the psychometric properties of the scale, a 2-parameter logistic item response theory analysis was conducted. Item response theory analysis yields two primary pieces of information: item discrimination, or how well each scale item identifies people at different levels of the trait, and item difficulty, or the probability that a person’s endorsement of a particular item is a function of them being higher in that trait (Yang and Kao 2014). Table 8 lists the item discriminations and difficulties for the positive risk taking scale items. Figure 3a depicts the item-level characteristic curves (ICC). The ICCs indicate the probability that someone will endorse an item as a function of the latent factor. Steeper S-shaped curves indicate that high positive risk taking is associated with a greater probability of endorsing an item on the scale. As a general indicator of total scale performance, Fig. 3b depicts the total information curve for the positive risk scale, which indicates how much information the scale produces about positive risk taking (Yang and Kao 2014). A bell curve centered on zero indicates the scale provides the most information about someone who is average on positive risk taking.
Finally, analyses of configural and scalar measurement invariance for age and gender were conducted. Metric invariance is not available for binary indicators (Mplus User’s Guide, p. 542). Configural invariance determines whether the same items measure positive risk taking across groups. One can assume configural invariance with adequate model fit statistics (see Hooper et al. 2008). Scalar invariance indicates equality of intercepts, which justifies the comparison of group means. Scalar invariance is established with a non-significant difference between the chi-square model fit statistics between the configural and scalar models. For a more detailed description of invariance assessments, please see van de Schoot et al. 2012 and Vandenberg and Lance 2000. For the analyses involving age, age was coded into three groups: 16–17 year-olds (20%), 18 year-olds (52%), and 19–20 year-olds (28%) to ensure comparable group sizes (otherwise 16-year-olds comprise 1.3% of the sample and 20-year-olds comprise 4.5% of the sample). Results suggested configural invariance for both age and gender, scalar invariance for age, and partial scalar invariance for gender (see Table 9). Modification indices in the Mplus output indicated that removal of one item (tried a new sport or played a sport you’re not good at when you might have embarrassed yourself) would achieve full scalar invariance for gender, as indicated by a non-significant chi-square difference between the configural and scalar models (Δχ2 = 6.955, p = 0.434). Gender was included as a covariate in all analyses and was not of primary interest in this study. Therefore, we did not remove any items from the scale.
a Item characteristic curves for items included in final, 10-item positive risk taking scale; (b) Total information curve for final, 10-item positive risk taking scale
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Duell, N., Steinberg, L. Differential Correlates of Positive and Negative Risk Taking in Adolescence. J Youth Adolescence 49, 1162–1178 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01237-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01237-7