Predictors of adolescent female decision making regarding contraceptive usage

The relationship of cognitive capacity, cognitive egocentrism, and experience factors to decision making in a contraceptive usage problem was examined. Fifty sexually active, unmarried females, ages 14-19, served as subjects. Using correlational, regression, and canonical correlational analyses, cognitive capacity and cognitive egocentrism variables, not experience with contraceptives, were found to be significantly related to, and predictive of, five of seven decision-making variables. Forty-one percent of the variance was accounted for in predicting the canonical decision-making variable. The implications of these results for future research are discussed.