title: Effects of pubertal timing on deviant behaviors in Taiwan: A longitudinal analysis of 7th- to 12th-grade adolescents.
abstract: We investigated the relationship between pubertal timing and deviant behaviors in Taiwan using Taiwan Youth Project (TYP) data. The TYP used multistage-stratified and class-clustered methods in 40 randomly selected schools. We analyzed 1541 adolescents (770 boys; 50.0%) who self-reported their deviant behaviors in 7th, 8th, 10th, and 12th grades. Participants were assigned to early- (n = 244; 15.8%), on-time- (n = 992; 64.4%), and late- (n = 305; 19.8%) puberty groups, and one-way analysis of variance and latent growth modeling were used to examine the frequency of deviant behaviors between them. Early-puberty adolescents had more deviant behaviors (mean = 0.43, SD = 0.74) than did late-puberty adolescents during 7th grade (mean = 0.27, SD = 0.59; p = 0.004), but not after 8th grade. There were no significant differences in the deviance level between on-time-puberty and early- and late-puberty adolescents. Moreover, puberty was not correlated with the growth of deviant behaviors, which decreased with age. However, boys seemed to engage in more deviant behaviors at the beginning, but their engagement seemed to decline faster than it did for girls. In sum, the deviance of early-puberty adolescents seemed to diminish as they got older.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, National Cheng Kung University Hospital, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Meng-Che
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Tsai
authors.affiliation: Department of Publich Health, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Carol
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Strong
authors.affiliation: Department of Publich Health, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. Electronic address: cylin36933@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Chung-Ying
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Lin
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007604:Juvenile Delinquency / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D011627:Puberty / Q000523:psychology*; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D013624:Taiwan
keywords: Adolescents; Delinquency; Deviance; Longitudinal; Pubertal development