Pregledni rad

Measuring Pubertal Maturation in Research on Adolescent Development

Gordana KERESTEŠ orcid.org/0000-0002-5056-3894 ; Filozofski fakultet, Zagreb
Irma BRKOVIĆ ; Filozofski fakultet, Zagreb
Gordana KUTEROVAC JAGODIĆ ; Filozofski fakultet, Zagreb

Sažetak

During the last several decades, various aspects of
adolescents' experiences and behaviors have been intensively
examined. However, the role of pubertal maturation – central
and most salient developmental change at transition from
childhood to adulthood – is surprisingly scarcely examined
within the research of other aspects of adolescents'
functioning and development. Furthermore, researchers are
prone to base their conclusions about the level of pubertal
development on the data on child’s chronological age. Due
to pronounced inter-individual differences in onset of puberty
and the rate of pubertal development, such inferring has
serious flaws. One of the reasons for omitting measures of
puberty in research on adolescents is the difficulty to measure pubertal development. With few exceptions,
measures of pubertal development haven’t been used so far
in psychological and other non-medical research in Croatia.
The aim of this article is to review various measures of
pubertal maturation, with the emphasis on those adequate
for application beyond medical and clinical context, in order
to encourage researchers to use them and, in that way,
contribute to better understanding of adolescents’ behavior
and development.

Ključne riječi

adolescents; pubertal maturation; measuring pubertal changes; absolute pubertal status; pubertal timing (relative pubertal status)

Hrčak ID:

62614

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/62614

Datum izdavanja:

23.12.2010.

Podaci na drugim jezicima: hrvatski njemački

Posjeta: 3.475 *