Adolescent pregnancy and childbearing are of national concern; documented sequelae to teen pregnancy are numerous and varied. When the adolescent is a member of a minority group the potential for problems is magnified. The primary purpose of this study is to test a model relating physiological, psychological and cognitive maturity with sociocultural and demographic control variables to teen pregnancy for inner city adolescents. This longitudinal study will follow four cohorts of high school freshmen, who are routinely tested as freshmen on ego identity and knowledge about human reproduction, to identify those who become pregnant. The first cohort will be followed for four years, the second for three years, the third for two years and the fourth for one year to identify adolescents who become pregnant. Any student who is identified as pregnant will be a candidate for the study, as will a randomly selected same cohort/race-ethnic background/menarcheal, never pregnant student. The pregnant students and their randomly selected case controls will be interviewed and additionally tested in areas previously shown to be related to adolescent pregnancy. Data from these interviews will facilitate testing the nursing model. Longitudinal, ego identity and human reproduction knowledge data will facilitate testing the ability of these to predict risk for teen pregnancy. The study site is an inner city high school in Chicago. The site was chosen because of the large Hispanic population, the high rate of teen pregnancy, the community's high infant mortality rate and low birth weight babies and the school's interest in the prevention of adolescent pregnancy and school dropout. This study will make theoretical and practical contributions and facilitate early identification of pregnant teens and refer them for care early in the pregnancy. The results of this study will enable nurses, educators, and other professionals to identify those adolescents most at risk for pregnancy. This in turn will allow for more precise directing of resources to intervention programs whose primary purpose is to prevent pregnancies among those at high risk.
