Talk:US study finds that delinquent students claim to begin sex lives earlier

Title reflects misleading conclusions by authors of some source articles. Study reflects students, not general population. Study bases early activity and delinquency on student surveys, not objective measures. Study did not draw causality conclusion reflected in some source articles.

Flawed

I feel the studies are flawed, unless they also define the word "delinquent." What exactly does that mean? Raphael s 22:32, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionary defines the word. Here's the link [1]. Dragei 23:12, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, instead it could be that delinquency leads to early sex. There's no way of proving that it's the other way around. After all, early sex is considered delinquent behavior in some cultures. --72.144.94.86 00:05, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

It's not saying one leads to the other, just that a pattern emerges between the two. It's not causality, it's a correlation.--67.72.98.113 05:12, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I've fixed the title, but the article needs work: Don't suggest that early sex may lead to delinquency beyond possibly quoting the researcher. Infact, we should quote the researcher but suggest that other possible explinations are more likely:

1. There are many studies showing that parental relationships influence both delinquency and sex life, but this study makes no attempt to control for this almost-surey-causal factors. And ditto for peer group.
2. It's also pretty hard to get accurate sexual history reports, and surveys don't cut it. So we're likely seeing significant reporting effects, i.e. good kids hide it while bad kids show off or even invent.

I'd be more curious to know if a late sex life has negative consequences: kids have been marrying & raising kids forever, but late-bloomer-ism is a modern disease, and possibly more dangerous. Nyarlathotep 02:22, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree, Nyarlathotep. But we should all focus on the story being about what the study found. If the study is wrong and/or doesn't answer common questions is not really the job of a news article reporting on the results of the study. In fact that is pretty much what the job isn't unless there are relevant and current sources that counter the study. IMO --SVTCobra 02:28, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

If we can find the referneces, we can say both that (a) surveys are inferior to interviews for studing sexual behavior, and (b) these results do not account for parental causality. But the 2nd pont can likely only really be verified by reading the journal article. Nyarlathotep 15:35, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I have two points. First, the article never discusses cause, only correlation. So, all of the points above about other things that should be studied, like parental interference, are irrelevant. The issue was only a statistical correlation, which is interesting. Second, how can the article give a range of ages and call it the "average age." Do this mean that this is the 25%-75% range; so that 50% of kids fall into that range. The mean, the statistical definition of average, would be one single value and would give us no clue as to the spread of ages.Bt1159804 13:51, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Just being corelational isn't really enough when you've got such a glaring obvious causal factor, especially when that causal factor is easier to exploit for targeting treatment/intervention. A meaningful corelational study should prove that *some* unknown causal factor impacting both exists. But this lady is just selling "58% increase" without saying how much is handled by known major common causal factors. btw, It's an average by school, she's likely running some statistics sperately for each school. Nyarlathotep 15:35, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I guess you can understand why it got published it such an average journal. It's really poor.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 15:23, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

• They say that those who begin sex life earlier become bad boys/girls. I say that abot-to-be-delinquents feel more free do for the first time something so scary and so amorale and others. --213.149.123.41 17:08, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

• Do you realy think that sex at an early age made them delinquents. This is just like one of those researches that "have prooven" that evolution theory is wrong or that smoking is healty, that cocaine is godd for you if taken in small quantities... --213.149.123.41 17:08, 1 March 2007 (UTC)