GAINESVILLE, Fla., Jan. 30 (AScribe Newswire) -- Adolescents who experience puberty earlier than their peers are more likely to be physically victimized through fights or offending behaviors such as bullying.
Sexual victimization was not investigated as part of this study, but Piquero is researching its links to early puberty.
Piquero and Haynie sampled more than 10,000 adolescents, through the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a national sample also called the Add Health, which is one of the premier longitudinal studies of adolescents in the United States.
With this study, Piquero tracked children who had reached puberty in 1995 and looked at their victimization experiences a year later.
"It's like collecting puberty information today, and then I called the kids up in a year and asked them what happened to them in the last 12 months," Piquero said.
It introduces dating, experiences with the opposite sex and interactions with people who are older, Piquero said.
Parents should learn about the social changes their children are experiencing during puberty, Piquero said, and parents should encourage children to involve themselves in positive relationships and activities, rather than those that could put them at risk for becoming victims.
"It really is a challenge for parents to figure out how to keep their kids in environments that aren't as risky," said Julia Graber, a UF associate professor of developmental psychology, who was not a researcher in the study.
He studied a nationwide sample of youngsters and found that puberty also brings our kids a new risk of becoming crime victims.
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