The purpose of the proposed project is to increase our understanding of the development of adolescent romantic relationships and their association with adolescents' individual and relational functioning. I will address this broad goal by intensively examining the nature of adolescent romantic couples' relationships by investigating couple members' subjective understanding of their communication processes and their association with adolescents' individual and relational functioning concurrently and one year later. Samples of 100 middle adolescent romantic couples and 100 late adolescent romantic couples will be recruited from participants in a preliminary screening study to address developmental questions cross-sectionally and longitudinally about the nature of couples' communication processes and how their communication processes relate to their views of romantic relationships. Their mental health, their sexual behaviors, and the quality of their romantic partners will be assessed from the couples' video-taped conversation using a video-recall procedures Individual couple members will be followed-up one year after their initial participation to investigate questions about the developmental trajectories of their relationships. Hypotheses stemming from the marital, family, and peer literatures about the general nature of adolescents' romantic relationships and the more specific nature of communication in relationships and its association with individual and relational functioning will be tested. Analyses will focus on exploring couples' communication patterns and their views of relationships, individual well-being, sexual behaviors and the quality of their relationships in context. The individual variables, developmental level (middle or late adolescents) and gender, as well as the contexts of close friend relationship, community, ethnicity, relation, and parental marital situation will be examined.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01HD039931-04
Application #
6637999
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-RPHB-1 (01))
Program Officer
Maholmes, Valerie
Project Start
2000-06-15
Project End
2005-05-31
Budget Start
2003-06-01
Budget End
2004-05-31
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
2003
Total Cost
$128,700
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Tennessee Knoxville
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
003387891
City
Knoxville
State
TN
Country
United States
Zip Code
37996
Norona, Jerika C; Salvatore, Joseph F; Welsh, Deborah P et al. (2014) Rejection sensitivity and adolescents' perceptions of romantic interactions. J Adolesc 37:1257-67
Little, Katherine C; Welsh, Deborah P; Darling, Nancy et al. (2011) Brief report: ""I can't talk about it:"" sexuality and self-silencing as interactive predictors of depressive symptoms in adolescent dating couples. J Adolesc 34:789-94
Smith, Justin D; Welsh, Deborah P; Fite, Paula J (2010) Adolescents' relational schemas and their subjective understanding of romantic relationship interactions. J Adolesc 33:147-57
Welsh, Deborah P; Shulman, Shmuel (2008) Directly observed interaction within adolescent romantic relationships: What have we learned? J Adolesc 31:877-91
Haugen, Peter T; Welsh, Deborah P; McNulty, James K (2008) Empathic accuracy and adolescent romantic relationships. J Adolesc 31:709-27
Welsh, Deborah P; Grello, Catherine M; Harper, Melinda S (2006) No strings attached: the nature of casual sex in college students. J Sex Res 43:255-67
Widman, Laura; Welsh, Deborah P; McNulty, James K et al. (2006) Sexual communication and contraceptive use in adolescent dating couples. J Adolesc Health 39:893-9
Welsh, Deborah P; Dickson, Joseph W (2005) Video-recall procedures for examining subjective understanding in observational data. J Fam Psychol 19:62-71