High-school romances untangled

Relationships linked in surprisingly long chains

American Journal of Sociology

In this chart, pink circles represent female students at a high school, and blue circles represent malestudents. Connecting lines show romantic relationships in the six months preceding interviews. Inaddition to this network, there were about 100 other interconnections, with 63 of those between twostudents who were not romantically linked to anyone else. Click on the image for the full analysis.

By Robert Roy Britt

Senior writer

Updated: 5:32 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2005

A study of sexual and romantic relations at a high school found students connected by longchains, rather than in a tight network with a core group of a promiscuous few.Sharing of partners was rare, but many students were indirectly linked through one partner toanother and another.The unexpected result could help shape strategies for combating sexually transmitted diseasesamong young people."We went into this study believing we would find a core model, with a small group of people whoare sexually active," said James Moody, a professor of sociology at Ohio State University. "Wewere surprised to find a very different kind of network."

A virtually unknowable chain

In the most striking chain, 52 percent of the romantically involved students were connected in amanner of student A having relations with B, and B having relations with C, and so on down theline over the 18 months of the study.Students couldn't possibly know of all the connections, the scientists conclude."Many of the students only had one partner," Moody said. "They certainly weren’t beingpromiscuous. But they couldn’t see all the way down the chain."The study was detailed in a recent issue of the American Journal of Sociology. Peter Bearman of Columbia University and Katherine Stovel of the University of Washington participated in theresearch.The work was based on theNational Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a 1995 survey of students at an unidentified Midwestern high school. The students were mostly white, in the onlypublic school in a mid-sized city more than an hour away from a metropolis.

Complex rules for teen dating

Of about 1,000 students at the school, 832 were interviewed and asked to identify their sexualand romantic partners over the previous 18 months. Just more than half reported having sexualintercourse, a rate comparable to the national average, the researchers say.Of all the pairings, 63 involved two students who had not partnered with anyone else.The research reveals a semantically complex rule that seems to guide adolescent sexual conduct.Here goes: A girl is loath to date her old boyfriend's new girlfriend's old boyfriend.Adults don't generally adhere to any similar rule, so core populations of sexually active adultstend to be prime spreaders of disease. But with adolescents, the study suggests, "there aren’tany hubs to target, so you have to focus on broad-based interventions," Moody said.

[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6862058/]

RESEARCHERS MAP THE SEXUAL NETWORK OF AN ENTIRE HIGHSCHOOL

researchnews.osu.edu ^

| Jeff Grabmeier

Posted on

01/24/2005 10:01:51 PM PST

paltz

COLUMBUS, Ohio - For the first time, sociologists have mapped the romantic and sexualrelationships of an entire high school over 18 months, providing evidence that these adolescentnetworks may be structured differently than researchers previously thought.The results showed that, unlike many adult networks, there was no core group of very sexuallyactive people at the high school. There were not many students who had many partners and who provided links to the rest of the community.Instead, the romantic and sexual network at the school created long chains of connections thatspread out through the community, with few places where students directly shared the same partners with each other. But they were indirectly linked, partner to partner to partner. Onecomponent of the network linked 288 students - more than half of those who were romanticallyactive at the school - in one long chain. (See figure for a representation of the network.)James Moody, co-author of the study and professor of sociology at Ohio State University, said this network could be compared to rural phone lines, running from a long main trunk line toindividual houses. As a comparison, many adult sexual networks are more like an airline hubsystem where many points are connected to a small number of hubs.“We went into this study believing we would find a core model, with a small group of peoplewho are sexually active,” Moody said. “We were surprised to find a very different kind of network.”The results have implications for designing policies to stop the spread of sexually transmitteddiseases among adolescents, he said.The study was conducted by Peter Bearman of Columbia University, Moody, and Katherine Stovel of the University of Washington. The results were published in a recent issue of the

American Journal of Sociology

.The researchers used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.As part of that study in 1995, researchers interviewed nearly all students at an unidentified Midwesternschool that they renamed “Jefferson High School.” It is an almost all-white school, and is theonly public high school in this mid-sized city, which is more than an hour away from the nearestmetropolitan area.Researchers interviewed 832 of the approximately 1,000 students at the school. Students wereasked to identify their sexual and romantic partners in the past 18 months from a roster of other students attending their school. (Romantic relationships were ones in which the students namedthe other as a romantic partner. Non-romantic sexual partners were those in which the participants said they had sexual intercourse, but were not dating).