This proposal is a response to NICHD's request for application for research that 1) extends the small empirical base linking gender roles and ideologies to behaviors relating to unintended pregnancy, 2) includes racial and ethnic minorities and 3) includes qualitative as well as quantitative methods. A five-year project is proposed to evaluate whether and how femininity ideology is associated with an increased risk of unintended pregnancy, as is suggested by the theoretical and empirical literatures. The concept of gender idiology will be extended by the creation and validation of a scale to measure femininity ideology. This scale will then be used in a longitudinal study that consists of 1) a survey of 500 eighth-grade female adolescents, who are Black, Hispanic and white from poor, working class and middle class backgrounds, who live in a community with a high teenage birth rate and 2) individual interviews with approximately 50 of those surveyed. A second panel of data collection will occur in the tenth grade. The theoretical framework for the study marries concerns about the high risk of unintended pregnancy for early adolescents with the gender role intensification that occurs in this development period. Multivariate regression analyses will be used to test the following hypotheses; 1) Femininity ideology is associated with risk for unintended pregnancy in girls during adolescence and is a) moderated by race, socioeconomic status, feminine personality trait and sexual involvement and b) mediated by agency in sexual relationships and girls' acceptance of their sexuality and 2) Femininity ideology in early adolescence is a stronger predictor of risk of unintended pregnancy in middle adolescence than is femininity ideology in middle adolescence. The role of femininity ideology in behaviors that can result in risk of unintended pregnancy for adolescent girls in specific contexts will be described qualitatively. Content analysis will be used to identify the salient themes of femininity ideology in situations that invite risk for girls from different racial/ethnic backgrounds as they move from early to middle adolescence. Using narrative analysis, the ways in which these adolescent girls use femininity ideology to make sense of sexual, contraceptive and reproductive behavior which can lad to risk of unintended pregnancy will be documented.
| Impett, Emily A; Sorsoli, Lynn; Schooler, Deborah et al. (2008) Girls'relationship authenticity and self-esteem across adolescence. Dev Psychol 44:722-33 |
| Impett, Emily A; Schooler, Deborah; Tolman, Deborah L (2006) To be seen and not heard: femininity ideology and adolescent girls' sexual health. Arch Sex Behav 35:131-44 |
