Measuring Puberty and Understanding Its Impact: A Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Twins

Pubertal development is an important focus of current biopsychosocial research. The Pubertal Development Scale or PDS (Petersen, Crockett, Richards, and Boxer, J. Youth Adolesc. (1988) 17: 117–133) has become a widely used measure in school-based and longitudinal research, because it incorporates several indices of pubertal development. This study reports normative data on the PDS for two population-based birth cohorts of Finnish twin boys and girls, assessed at ages 11–12 and 14. Additionally, we report longitudinal analyses of the associations between pubertal development and substance use, suggesting that the impact of pubertal timing is more complex than previously reported; associations commonly assumed between pubertal development and substance use held only for those whose developmental level, relative to peers, remained stable across follow-up. Finally, we report twin correlations for the PDS which suggest that sibling similarity for pubertal development arises from both shared genes and shared environments and that the patterns of these influences vary between sexes and across time.