Measuring physical status and timing in early adolescence: A developmental perspective

Recently, the timing-of-events model typically used for exploring adult development has been proposed for studying early adolescence and the pubertal processes occurring then. As a consequence, new interest has been generated about the psychological effects of being early, on time, or late in sexual maturation during early adolescence. A major issue has to do with the choice of maturational events to study, since puberty is a process involving numerous events, all of which have a different developmental course. This paper reviews some of the maturational events that are applicable in studying psychological effects of pubertal status and timing. Nine changes are reviewed (bone, height, weight, body fat, breast, body hair, penile, testicular, and menarcheal changes) in terms of measurement techniques, psychometric properties, and intercorrelations with other pubertal events. In addition, the usefulness of each measure for psychological research on maturational timing and status is discussed. Finally, how pubertal measures may be incorporated into a developmental perspective is considered, especially with regard to rate, duration, and asynchrony of pubertal changes.