Any youth supplied information at all of the pubertal staging assessments (n = 155 for boys’ genital development, 162 for boys’ pubic hair development, 191 for girls’ breast improvement, and 186 for girls’ pubic hair development), there were many youth who missed or declined to participate in 1 or more assessments. Varying slightly from outcome to outcome, 68 ?3 with the sample offered data on 5 or additional (of seven) occasions, and less than ten provided information on only one occasion. We tested whether or not attrition was related to demographic indicators using a series of analyses of variance. For by far the most component, extent of missingness was not related to demographic indicators (i.e., mother or companion education, income-to-needs ratio; Fs < 3.19, ps > .05). Nonetheless, the amount of missing assessments for girls’ pubic hair improvement was associated to families’ income-to-needs ratio, F(1, 368) = three.94, p = .05, such that girls in families with a greater income-to-needs ratio at age six months offered fewer assessments. We ran Little’s (1988) test for missing totally at random for the puberty physical and psychological outcome variables separately for boys and girls (provided that analyses could be carried out separately), and also the assumption of missing entirely at random was not rejected for either boys, two(1544) = 1585.65, p = .23, or girls, 2(1774) = 1755.75, p = .62.GGTI298 manufacturer NIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptDev Psychol. Author manuscript; readily available in PMC 2014 February 19.Marceau et al.PageMeasures We assessed youth on pubertal status making use of clinician-reported Tanner stages and on numerous physical and psychological outcomes, such as height, weight, BMI, internalizing issues, externalizing difficulties, and risky sexual behaviors. Pubertal development–Annually, starting at age 9.five, boys’ and girls’ pubertal development was assessed by nurse practitioners or physicians working with Tanner criteria for stage of maturation (Marshall Tanner, 1969, 1970). Following the Pediatric Research in Workplace Settings Network study of pubertal development and also the American Academy of Pediatrics manual, Assessment of Sexual Maturity Stages in Girls (see Herman-Giddens Bourdony, 1995), the assessment integrated use of photos displaying the five Tanner stages (prepubescence to complete sexual maturity) and breast bud palpation (for the age ten.5?5.five assessments).1 Every year clinicians were recertified for correct assessment (requiring 87.five reliability) of both girls (by way of photos in the Pediatric Study in Workplace Settings Network study of pubertal development; Herman-Giddens Bourdony, 1995) and boys (by way of Tanner images adapted from Tanner, 1962). In the case that adolescents were between stages, they had been assigned the reduce stage rating. People “staged out” and were no longer assessed once they had been thought of to have reached complete sexual maturity. Especially, girls staged out just after having achieved menarche and Tanner Stage 5 for each breast and pubic hair improvement, and boys staged out after getting achieved Stage five for both genital and pubic hair development. We note that researchers generating use from the SECCYD data supply must be conscious that folks who staged out are coded as missing within the information and need algorithmic extraction and replacement with “true” values. PubMed ID:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21029858 The frequency distribution of observed pubertal stage by age, also as average stage at each age, is given in Table 1. Physical growth–Anthropometric measurements were tak.