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.
