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The problem
Intervention: Longitudinal observation and measurement of pubertal timing and tempo in relation to mental health and risk behavior initiation
Who it was tested with: 1,784 urban black South African adolescents from the Birth to Twenty Plus cohort.
Children or communities are compared with a group that did not receive the intervention, or followed over years. This is the design that best separates what the intervention did from everything else that changed.
"We used regression analyses to assess associations between age at menarche and latent classes of pubertal timing and tempo and adolescent internalizing and externalizing emotional and behavioral problems, eating attitudes, and patterns of health risk behavior initiation." This longitudinal observational design with repeated measurements across adolescence can demonstrate temporal associations and patterns of change, placing it at the experimental tier despite its observational nature.
Observational design prevents causal inference; findings specific to urban South African population; unmeasured confounding variables may explain associations
Across countries and designs
1 study · 1 country
