Adolescent Gender Attitudes: Between and Within Couples Effects

This study examines gender attitudes in the context of romantic relationships, and explores the relationship between gender attitudes and individual and relational outcomes. Participants (208 couples) were recruited from a previous study of the dating behaviors of 2200 students who attended 17 East Tennessee High Schools (Harper, Welsh, Grello, & Dickson, under review). Multilevel modeling was utilized in order to maximize the reliability of our models as a technique specifically designed to address the non-independence of partner members’ data (Raudenbusch & Bryk, 2002). Our findings indicate an association between gender attitudes and communication, relationship satisfaction, and depressive symptoms in adolescent couples. Partial support for hypotheses predicting the association between the discrepancies in couple members’ gender attitudes and individual and relational functioning was also found. However, support for developmental differences in gender attitudes was not found. Implications for future research are explored.