Poster #229 - Romance, Popularity, Problem Behavior, and Religiosity in Indonesian Muslim Adolescents

• In Event: 1-169 - Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Section - Social Relationships

Integrative Statement

Among the predictors of US adolescent romantic involvement are popularity, deviance and substance use. Little is known about the progression of romantic relationships in countries such as Indonesia in which romantic involvement is typically discouraged and regulated by religion.
Method
This is a three-year longitudinal study, for which the Y1 and Y2 results are currently available. There was a total of 563 tenth grade Indonesian Muslim adolescents practicing (277 boys and 286 girls) (15.7 years of mean age) in Y1, and 446 adolescents were reassessed (210 boys and 236 girls) at Y2.
Measure included: Romantic experiences: Participants were asked whether they had engaged in each of 15 different types of romantic experiences using a revised version of The Dating History Questionnaire (Furman & Wehner, 1992). Religiosity: 18 items for boys (α = .83) and 17 items for girls (α = .78) assessed recommended and required religious behavior (Purwono, 2010). Problem behavior: Consisted of 3 components, alcohol use (1 item), tobacco use (1 item), and minor deviant behavior (13 items). The mean of these separate scores were transformed using a square root transformation to form a composite score. Popularity: Children nominated the most popular kid within his/her class with the resulting proportion scores standardized within class.
Results
In the first set of analyses, Y1 romance was regressed on gender, Y1 religiosity, Y1 problem behavior, Y1 popularity, and the interactions between these predictors. In this concurrent analysis, Y1 popularity was positively associated with Y1 romantic experiences; and girls reported more romantic involvement than boys. There was a significant Y1 religiosity by Y1 problem behavior interaction. Simple slope tests showed that Y1 problem behavior was positively associated with Y1 romance at all levels of Y1 religiosity, but the effect of problem behavior was stronger for those with higher levels of Y1 religiosity. In the longitudinal analyses that controlled for Y1 romance, Y1 popularity and Y1 problem behavior were positively associated with Y2 romantic experiences when Y1 romantic experiences was controlled.
Discussion
Our results showed similar findings with Western studies in Indonesian adolescents. Though Indonesian adolescents are not encouraged to be romantically involved, adolescents who are either popular or deviant engage in romantic activities earlier than their peers.
Our findings further reveal the important role of religion in Indonesian adolescent romance, such that religiosity moderated the association between problem behavior and romantic involvement in the concurrent analyses. We will further explore this question using growth curve analyses when we have the complete three-year data set. These analyses will be available in time for the SRCD meeting.
Finally, adolescent romance in Indonesia is viewed as being more deviant than it is in the USA. From our finding problem behavior was more strongly correlated with romantic involvement in this study (.30 to .33) than in past U.S. studies that we could locate in which such correlations were reported (.15 to .17). More systematic study of this question is needed.

Authors

• Mengqian Shen, Purdue University
  Presenting Author

• Urip Purwono, Universitas Padjadjaran
  Non-Presenting Author

• Doran French, Purdue University
  Non-Presenting Author