The Effect of Relative Pubertal Maturation and Perceived Popularity on Symptoms of Depression and Social Anxiety in Adolescent Boys and Girls

Rebecca van Rijn; Nikki C. Lee; Miriam Hollarek; Hester Sijtsma; Reubs J. Walsh; Mariët van Buuren; Barbara R. Braams; Lydia Krabbendam

doi:10.1007/s10964-023-01836-0

The Effect of Relative Pubertal Maturation and Perceived Popularity on Symptoms of Depression and Social Anxiety in Adolescent Boys and Girls

Rebecca van Rijn^*
, Nikki C. Lee
, Miriam Hollarek
, Hester Sijtsma
, Reubs J. Walsh
, Mariët van Buuren
, Barbara R. Braams
, Lydia Krabbendam

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Research has shown that adolescents – particularly girls – who mature relatively early often experience more internalizing problems. This effect is thought to be partially driven by psychosocial mechanisms, but previous research based relative pubertal maturation on complete samples or population standards, instead of considering the adolescents’ direct peer environment. In the current study the level of adolescents’ pubertal development was assessed relative to their classmates in order to examine relative pubertal maturation. The effects of adolescents’ relative pubertal status, and their perceived popularity, on symptoms of social anxiety and depression in adolescents were studied. All analyses were also performed for absolute pubertal maturation. Participants were 397 young adolescents (M _age = 13.06, SD = 0.36, 49.9% girls) at timepoint 1, and 307 (M_age = 14.08, SD = 0.36, 50.5% girls) at timepoint 2. A significant positive relationship was found between relative pubertal timing and symptoms of depression for girls but not boys. Social anxiety symptoms were not significantly related to relative pubertal timing in either sex. Relative pubertal maturation had no effect on change in or persistence of depressive and social anxiety symptoms one year later. The effects of the comparison with the immediate peer environment, did not seem to explain more variance in internalizing symptoms than the effects of early maturation.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	2384-2403
Number of pages	20
Journal	Journal of Youth and Adolescence
Volume	52
Issue number	11
Early online date	17 Aug 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-023-01836-0
Publication status	Published - Nov 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).

Funding

The authors would like to thank the pupils and schools that participated in this study. The authors are also very grateful to the student assistants and undergraduate students that helped with data collection. R.R. developed the study concept, collected the data, carried out the analyses and wrote the initial draft of the paper; N.L. developed the study concept, was involved in the study design, collected the data and provided feedback on the draft; M.H. was involved in study design and collected the data; H.S. was involved in study design and collected the data; R.W. was involved in study design and collected the data; M.B. was involved in the study design; B.B. developed the study concept and provided feedback on the draft; L.K. developed the study concept, was involved in study design and provided feedback on the draft. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version. The research reported in this manuscript was collected as part of the #SoConnect project, funded by a European Research Council Consolidator Grant to L.K. (Grant number 648082). The research was funded with the support of the Ammodo Science Award 2020 for Social Sciences. The funders had no role in this study design, data collection, analysis and interpretation of the results. The participants and their parents did not provide explicit consent for public archiving of the research data, therefore the data is not stored in a public repository. Anonymized data will be made available to individual researchers upon request, when compatible with the General Data Protection Regulation. Additionally, researchers that request the data will be required to have obtained ethics approval from their host institution and are not allowed to share the data. The research reported in this manuscript was collected as part of the #SoConnect project, funded by a European Research Council Consolidator Grant to L.K. (Grant number 648082). The research was funded with the support of the Ammodo Science Award 2020 for Social Sciences. The funders had no role in this study design, data collection, analysis and interpretation of the results.

Funders	Funder number
European Research Council
???publication-publication-funding-organisation-not-added???	648082

Keywords

Adolescence
Depression
Early maturation
Perceived popularity
Pubertal timing
Social anxiety

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title = "The Effect of Relative Pubertal Maturation and Perceived Popularity on Symptoms of Depression and Social Anxiety in Adolescent Boys and Girls",

abstract = "Research has shown that adolescents – particularly girls – who mature relatively early often experience more internalizing problems. This effect is thought to be partially driven by psychosocial mechanisms, but previous research based relative pubertal maturation on complete samples or population standards, instead of considering the adolescents{\textquoteright} direct peer environment. In the current study the level of adolescents{\textquoteright} pubertal development was assessed relative to their classmates in order to examine relative pubertal maturation. The effects of adolescents{\textquoteright} relative pubertal status, and their perceived popularity, on symptoms of social anxiety and depression in adolescents were studied. All analyses were also performed for absolute pubertal maturation. Participants were 397 young adolescents (M age = 13.06, SD = 0.36, 49.9\% girls) at timepoint 1, and 307 (Mage = 14.08, SD = 0.36, 50.5\% girls) at timepoint 2. A significant positive relationship was found between relative pubertal timing and symptoms of depression for girls but not boys. Social anxiety symptoms were not significantly related to relative pubertal timing in either sex. Relative pubertal maturation had no effect on change in or persistence of depressive and social anxiety symptoms one year later. The effects of the comparison with the immediate peer environment, did not seem to explain more variance in internalizing symptoms than the effects of early maturation.",

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AU - Sijtsma, Hester

AU - Walsh, Reubs J.

AU - van Buuren, Mariët

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AB - Research has shown that adolescents – particularly girls – who mature relatively early often experience more internalizing problems. This effect is thought to be partially driven by psychosocial mechanisms, but previous research based relative pubertal maturation on complete samples or population standards, instead of considering the adolescents’ direct peer environment. In the current study the level of adolescents’ pubertal development was assessed relative to their classmates in order to examine relative pubertal maturation. The effects of adolescents’ relative pubertal status, and their perceived popularity, on symptoms of social anxiety and depression in adolescents were studied. All analyses were also performed for absolute pubertal maturation. Participants were 397 young adolescents (M age = 13.06, SD = 0.36, 49.9% girls) at timepoint 1, and 307 (Mage = 14.08, SD = 0.36, 50.5% girls) at timepoint 2. A significant positive relationship was found between relative pubertal timing and symptoms of depression for girls but not boys. Social anxiety symptoms were not significantly related to relative pubertal timing in either sex. Relative pubertal maturation had no effect on change in or persistence of depressive and social anxiety symptoms one year later. The effects of the comparison with the immediate peer environment, did not seem to explain more variance in internalizing symptoms than the effects of early maturation.

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The Effect of Relative Pubertal Maturation and Perceived Popularity on Symptoms of Depression and Social Anxiety in Adolescent Boys and Girls

Abstract

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Keywords

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