Statistics show that the majority of Australian year 10-12 students (approximately 15-17 years) have engaged in some form of sexual behavior [12].
Third, although longitudinal data can be a quite powerful tool for understanding change and development, the current analyses squander some of that power. The regression results presented in Table 2 test whether sexual behaviors that participants already experienced by Time 1 predicted facets of sexual subjectivity at Time 2, controlling for sexual subjectivity at Time 1. Why would behavior that has already happened contribute to a re-ordering of individuals over the course of the next year? It seems that a more interesting and direct test of the longitudinal effects of sexual behavior on sexual subjectivity would test whether new sexual behaviors (that is, sexual behaviors experienced between Time 1 and Time 2) predict change in sexual subjectivity from Time 1 to Time 2. Moreover, the reverse paths -- from sexual subjectivity to future behavior -- are also not tested in this paper. More generally, I think the putative timescale of effects of behavior on sexual subjectivity needs more theoretical elaboration. Are behaviors in early adolescence (before age 16), for example, expected to continue to influence the trajectory of sexual subjectivity regardless of later sexual behavior? That seems to be the model implied by the analyses, but it is never explicitly specified.