The Saskatoon Youth Longitudinal Study: Background
Relationships are a fundamental aspect of human life. Like the air we breathe, the water we drink, or the food we eat, relationships help to keep us healthy and happy. From a developmental perspective, relationships provide us with opportunities to grow and develop. Just as a balance of right foods is essential for the physical growth of our children, a balance of "right" relationships are essential for their social and emotional development. However, what is right for a person at one stage of life may not necessarily be right for that person at another stage.
The purpose of the project currently underway in Saskatoon is to understand changes in the structure and function of relationships across late childhood and adolescence. We are also interested in understanding how these changes are related to the fluctuations in adolescent well-being so often observed in youth. The project, which started in 1997 with a few students in grade 8, has now expanded to include three public high schools and two public elementary schools.
One of the issues that we are particularly interested in exploring is how adolescents negotiate the transition into relationships involving other-sex peers. Prior to adolescence, most children tend to prefer to spend their time in the company of same-sex peers. If you asked a child to tell you who his/her best friend is, she/he would probably name a same-sex peer first. If you watched a child on the playground, you would notice that most of his/her time would be spent engaged in activities with same-sex peers. However, this begins to change in early adolescence. Negative attitudes toward other-sex peers begin to decline and we see that cross-sex interactions become more frequent and more meaningful during this period of development.
In spite of the public awareness that cross-sex relationships become more observable in adolescence, we know very little about the development and maintenance these relationships. Nor do we know much about how these relationships contribute to individual development. Much of the earliest work in this area has focussed exclusively on the sexual aspects of cross-sex relationships. The primary goal of this research was to understand teenage pregnancy and high risk sexual behaviour. More recently, some researchers have begun to examine the emotional aspects of romantic relationships. However, the goal of the current project in Saskatoon is to explore the diversity of relationships that emerge between boys and girls in adolescence. In particular, we propose to examine the features and functions of cross-sex friendships and to examine how these relationships contribute to individual development.
