Weak associations between pubertal development and psychiatric and behavioral problems.

ABSTRACT: Pubertal development has been associated with adverse outcomes throughout adolescence and adulthood. However, much of the previous literature has categorized outcome variables and pubertal timing measures for ease of mean difference or odds ratio interpretation. We use a UK-representative sample of over 5000 individuals drawn from the Twins Early Development Study to extend this literature by adopting an individual differences approach and emphasizing effect sizes. We investigate a variety of psychiatric and behavioral measures collected longitudinally at ages 11, 14 and 16, for multiple raters and for males and females separately. In addition, we use two measures of pubertal development: the Pubertal Development Scale at each age, as well as the age of menarche for girls. We found that pu

SUBMITTER: Smith-Woolley E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5416703 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature