A Critique to Dating, Sex and Substance Use as Correlates of Adolescents' Subjective Experience of Age (SEA)

This critique is based on the work of Arbeau, K.J., Galambos, N.L., & Jansson, S.M: Dating, sex, and substance use as correlates of adolescents' subjective experience of age (SEA), published in Journal of Adolescence, 30, 435-447, year 2007.

The first issue to discuss is that the age range and how its respective proportion from the sample is distributed, are unreported. Suspect that there might be some differences between the early and the late adolescents, their SEA and correlation with the domains is too global. Certain domains may be limited to certain age range and a better picture can be drawn if it can be separated in analysis to compare the effects between different age groups. The rationale here is that some behaviors can be normative only in later adolescents, and reported SEA from this group may have other reasons why they feel they are older, even though they engage in dating, sex and substance abuse, which is normal to their age.

According to the definition of SEA, the extent of discrepancy is not addressed clearly, i.e. when by how much older or younger is represented in the scale of 1-5, it may vary across people, as it might be subjective to different individuals' domain of impact: physical, social, cognitive or interaction of all, to see themselves as more mature or less, relative to their chronological ages. 'Slightly older' and 'A lot older' may have vague and subtle difference when it is taken into calculations and cannot really be quantified in comparing to a standard (e.g. 1-2 years is 'slightly; 3-5 years is 'a lot') when participants are told to respond. And when the subjective extent of discrepancy may vary across early and late adolescents, the 3 domain discussed may not have good explanation to normative behaviors and SEA.

Even though the result showed significant SEA effects across the adolescents, but it may be averaged by participants who perceived younger SEA, as the mean is 3.57 and 3.35 for girls and boys, it seems there are some 'pulling effects' which may have some hidden scopes the researchers might have neglected while their hypothesis is focused on older SEA. For instance, would adolescent who date with younger friends feel they are younger? The interview itself, despite the self report bias, may not answer why people think they are older by those factors named in the paper, it might be merely the motivation of adolescents to be looked in better light as they feel themselves is older, equals to mature enough to have the right and rational to deal with dating, sex and drugs, when they are interviewed, presumably they are honest.

Another problem of the study may be the sampling itself. When dealing with substance use, it is believed that the sub sample is not big enough to conclude anything, and it is supposed that the activity only involves adolescents within certain range of age. Drinking a beer and using marijuana have different significant impacts as consumed only once or occasionally may have different consequences for these two examples which is treated under the same category in the research.

All three of the main domains are believed to be closely correlated with each other. Dating may be highly correlated with sex experience, and each of them is believed to correlate with higher SEA, in turns correlate with substance abuse, as one of the risk taking behavior as not using contraceptives in sex among young age adolescents. Two indicators of sexual experience may appear redundant in the case of being comprised by the 'had sex' part, having more partners doesn't need to make one feel older to bigger extent.

Reference:
Arbeau, K.J., Galambos, N.L., & Jansson, S.M: Dating, sex, and substance use as correlates of adolescents' subjective experience of age (SEA), published in Journal of Adolescence, 30, 435-447, 2007