Social contagion, adolescent sexual behavior, and pregnancy: A nonlinear dynamic EMOSA model.

Abstract

Nonlinear dynamic modeling has useful developmental applications. The authors introduce this class of models and contrast them with traditional linear models. Epidemic models of the onset of social activities (EMOSA models) are a special case, motivated by J. L. Rodgers and D. C. Rowe's (1993) social contagion theory, which predict the spread of adolescent behaviors like smoking, drinking, delinquency, and sexuality. In this article, a biological outcome, pregnancy, is added to an earlier EMOSA sexuality model. Parameters quantify likelihood of pregnancy for girls of different sexuality statuses. Five different sexuality/pregnancy models compete to explain variance in national prevalence curves. One finding was that, in the context of the authors' simplified model, adolescent girls have an approximately constant probability of pregnancy across age and time since virginity.